CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – NASA’s newest rover on Mars hit the dusty red road this week, putting 21 feet per kilometer in its first test drive.
The Perseverance rover ventured from the landing position on Thursday, two weeks after landing on the red planet to look for signs of past life.
The roundabout, going back and forth lasted only 33 minutes and went so well that there was more driving at the tap on Friday and Saturday for the six-wheeled rover.
“This is truly the beginning of our journey here,” said Rich Rieber, the NASA engineer who drew the route. “It will be like the Odyssey, adventures along the way, hopefully there are no Cyclops and I’m sure there will be stories written about it.”
In his first race, Perseverance went 13 feet ahead, took a 150-degree left turn, then turned 8 feet. At a news conference on Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared photos of its tracks over and around small rocks.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see the wheel tracks and I’ve seen many,” said engineer Anais Zarifian.
Flight controllers continue to check all Perseverance systems. So far, so good. The rover’s 7-foot robot arm, for example, flexed its muscles for the first time on Tuesday.
Before the car-sized rover can head to an ancient river delta to collect rocks for possible return to Earth, it must give up the so-called “protection wedge” and release an experimental helicopter called Ingeniousness.
As it turns out, Perseverance landed right on the edge of a potential helicopter landing strip – a beautiful, flat place, according to Rieber. So, the plan is to get out of this runway, give up the pan, and then return for the long-awaited Ingenuity test flight. All this should be done by the end of spring.
Scientists are discussing whether to take the smoother path to get to the nearby delta or a possible harder path, with interesting remnants from once watery times, 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.
Perseverance – NASA’s largest and most elaborate rover to date – became the ninth American spacecraft to successfully land on Mars on February 18th. China hopes to land its smaller rover – which is currently orbiting the red planet – in a few months.
Meanwhile, NASA scientists announced Friday that they named the Perseverance contact site in honor of late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who grew up with JPL in Pasadena. She was one of the first African-Americans to receive general attention for science fiction. His works included “Bloodchild and Other Stories” and “The Parable of the Sower.”
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