The perseverance rover can travel 200 meters a day, but scientists must perform tests and safety checks before it can venture further.
NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover took its first short trip to the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the perfect image of the robot’s science lab hit the floor of a huge crater, mission managers said Friday.
The Perseverance rover ventured for the first time from its landing position on Thursday, two weeks after landing on the Red Planet to look for signs of past life.
Taking instructions from mission managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, the rover rolled four meters (13.1 feet) forward, turned about 150 degrees to the left, and then drove back 2 more, 5 meters (8.2 feet) for a 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) during his half-hour test in the Jezero Crater, the site of a long-lost white lake and the delta of the river on Mars.
“It went incredibly well,” Anais Zarifian, a JPL mobility testing engineer for Perseverance, said during a teleconference briefing with reporters, calling it a “huge milestone” for the mission.
The roundabout, going back and forth lasted only 33 minutes and went so well that the six-wheeled rover returned to motion on Friday.
Perseverance is able to drive an average of 200 meters a day.
The surface of Mars directly below the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars is seen using the Rover Down-Look in an image acquired on February 22, 2021 [File: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters]
NASA displayed a photo taken by the rover showing traces of the wheel tread left in the reddish, sandy Martian soil after its first voyage.
Another vivid image of the surrounding landscape shows a rugged, red terrain, dotted with large, dark boulders in the foreground and a high outcrop of rocky deposits, layered in the distance – marking the edge of the river delta.
I’m on the move! I just did my first test drive on Mars, covering about 5 meters. You look right at the beginning of my trail. Much more to do. pic.twitter.com/7tFIwWFfJ4
– Perseverance NASA Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) March 5, 2021
So far, Perseverance and its hardware, including the robot’s main arm, appear to be flawless, according to Robert Hogg, the mission’s deputy director.
JPL engineers still have additional equipment checks to run on the rover’s many instruments before it is ready to send the robot on a more ambitious journey as part of its main mission to search for traces of fossilized microbial life.
The team has not yet conducted post-landing tests of the rover’s sophisticated system to drill and collect rock samples for return to Earth through future missions to Mars.
The deck of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, with the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, one of the instruments on its arm, is seen in an image made by the rover’s navigation cameras on Mars February 20, 2021 [File: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters]
As soon as the system check on perseverance is complete, the rover will head to an ancient river delta to collect rocks for return to Earth in a decade.
Scientists are debating whether to take the smoother path to reach the nearby delta or a possibly harder path, with interesting remnants from that time once watery three to four billion years ago.