Nasa’s Perseverance rover heads to Mars in search for evidence of ancient life
● Mission is third to take off for Red Planet this month
Nasa’s new car-sized robotic spacecraft is on its way to Mars in a mission to search for evidence of ancient life.
The Perseverance rover successfully blasted off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida yesterday at 12:50pm UK time on board a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket - despite a 4.2-magnitude earthquake that shook southern California just 20 minutes before departure.
Nasa launch manager Omar Baez said: “We are on our way to Mars, there is no going back.”
It is the third mission heading to the Red Planet this month after launches by the UAE and China. The sixwheeled rover will now travel 314 million miles over a period of nearly seven months before attempting to land on a 31-mile crater named Jezero.
Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult because of its thin and dynamic atmosphere and dust storms that rage on its surface - a feat that has been described as “seven minutes of terror”.
Nasa has succeeded in getting only a handful of functioning probes and rovers on to the Martian surface and more than half of all spacecraft sent there have either blown up or crashed.
Just before lift-off, Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said: “There’s a reason we call the robot Perseverance because going to Mars is hard.
“It is always hard. It’s never been easy. In this case, it’s harder than ever before because we’re doing it in the midst of a pandemic.”
Satellite images suggest Jezero, located on the western edge of Isidis Planitia - a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator, may have been a lake more than 3.5 billion years ago, when Mars was warmer and wetter.
Scientists believe evidence of microbial life could be preserved in the clay and muddy rocks in the crater, if it ever existed on the planet.
Along with several sophisticated instruments that will gather information about Mars’ geology, atmosphere, and environmental conditions, the rover is also carrying a small 1.8kg helicopter.
Called Ingenuity, the copter will fly short distances and will mark the first attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet. If successful, it could lead to more flying probes on other planets. Perseverance will also trial technologies to help astronauts make future expeditions to Mars.
One such device includes an instrument, called Moxie, that will practise making oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere which is mostly made up of carbon dioxide. Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa’s science mission chief, described the Perseverance mission as “humanity’s first round trip to another planet”.
The rover will package rock and soil samples in small containers that will be retrieved during future missions in 2031.