NASA’s Perseverance Rover:
Nasa’s Perseverance rover has completed a full Earth year on Mars after its successful landing on February 19, 2021.
- During this period on the Red Planet, the rover has:
- Collected the first rock cores from another planet.
- Served as a base station for Ingenuity helicopter.
- Extracted oxygen from thin Martian air.
- It broke a record for the most distance driven by a rover on Mars in a single day by travelling almost 320 meters on February 14.
- Tested the first prototype oxygen generator on the Red Planet, called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment).
- NASA’s Perseverance rover is exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars and attempting to collect its first rock samples.
- It was launched in 2020 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V.
- It carried a unique instrument, MOXIE or Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment: which for the first time manufactured molecular oxygen on Mars using carbon dioxide from the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere (ISRU means In Situ Resource Utilization: or the use of local resources to meet human needs or requirements of the spacecraft).
- It carried Ingenuity, the first ever helicopter to fly on Mars.
- It is the planned first step to bring back rock samples from Mars for analysis in sophisticated laboratories on Earth: with the goal of looking for biosignatures: or signatures of present or past life.
