NASA’s Perseverance rover takes first drive on Mars
Percy finally took its first drive on Mars.
On Thursday, NASA’s Perseverance rover drove 4 meters forward, about 13 feet, and made a 150-degree turn to the left. It then backed up 2.5 meters, or about 8 feet.
Images released by NASA show wheel tracks on the Martian surface.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see wheel tracks, and I’ve seen a lot of them,” Anais Zarifian, the Perseverance mobility test bed engineer, said Friday during a news conference. “This is just a huge milestone for the mission and the mobility team.”
The rover landed on Mars on Feb. 18. It was expected to take a slightly longer drive Friday, and then another drive Saturday.
As part of Thursday’s drive, Percy used cameras to capture images of the area where its wheels made contact when landing. This landing spot has been named Octavia E. Butler Landing. Butler, who died in 2006, was the first African American woman to win both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. She was also the first science fiction writer honored with a MacArthur Fellowship, according to NASA.
The Curiosity rover’s landing site was named for Ray Bradbury, and the Perseverance team wanted to continue this theme of naming landing sites after science fiction writers.
“We chose on this mission to continue this theme,” Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy project scientist, said during the news conference, “in appreciation of the role that science fiction writers have played in inspiring so many of us to become the engineers, scientists and explorers who turn science fiction into reality for the next generation.”
Perseverance will help researchers better understand the geology of Mars. It will also search
for signs of ancient life — some rocks are known to preserve signs of life over time — and collect samples that could be returned to Earth in the future.
The car-sized Perseverance rover is about 10 feet long (not including its robotic
arm). It weighs 2,260 pounds and will be used to demonstrate technology for future robotic and human exploration. Notable technology includes an autopilot for avoiding hazards, sensors for gathering data during the landing and an autonomous navigation system that will allow the rover to drive faster in challenging terrain.
It will be at least one or two months before Perseverance finds an ideal location to drop off Ingenuity, the tiny helicopter attached to its belly. Ingenuity is set to have the first powered flight on Mars.