NASA releases Perseverance landing image
NASA’s Perseverance rover is in great shape on the surface of Mars, and scientists are already poring through photos to analyze where the rover landed and what discoveries might be in their future.
“As soon as we got that color image from the surface of Mars, our chats lit up with the science team saying, ‘Look over here, look over here,’ ” Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy project scientist, said Friday during a news conference. “And that’s exactly what we were hoping for, and we can’t believe that we’re really doing science now on the surface of Mars.”
NASA’s Perseverance rover reached the Red Planet on Thursday and immediately began sending images and data to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Some of these images were shared with the public on Friday.
One particularly stunning image shows cables lowering Perseverance to the surface of Mars. This was the first time the sky crane maneuver, when the rover is lowered beneath a rocketpowered jetpack, was seen on another planet.
“Seeing the rover hanging underneath the sky crane, underneath our rocket-powered jet pack, I mean this is something that we’ve never seen before,” said Aaron Stehura, the deputy phase lead for entry, descent and landing. He said the team was “awestruck” to see the maneuver, which keeps the rocket engines away from the landing site so they don’t kick up debris or dig a trench that could damage (or trap) the rover.
“There was just a feeling of victory that we were able to capture these and share it with the world,” Stehura said.
Another photo shows one of Perseverance’s wheels — and some nearby rocks with holes that have scientists intrigued.
Stack Morgan said these holes could mean different things depending if it’s a volcanic or sedimentary rock.
In volcanic rocks, lava or ash solidifies to make the rock. And during this process, gases can escape the rock and create these holes. Sedimentary rocks, which were formed from pre-existing rocks, can get these holes after fluids move through and dissolve parts of the rock. Fluids moving through the rock is significant because places where water moves through the subsurface could be potentially habitable environments for microbes. Volcanic rocks, on the other hand, could help determine the age of the rocks.
“We have to get our instruments out and look at these textures in fine detail,” Stack Morgan said. “We’re excited to follow up on that and find out really what’s going on here.”
Before Perseverance can begin moving and examining such rocks up close, its team will check out the rover’s various systems. Several pyrotechnic charges were expected to fire on Friday, releasing Perseverance’s mast (the “head” of the rover) from where it was fixed on the rover’s deck to help secure it during landing, according to a NASA news release. The mast is scheduled to be raised Saturday, and then additional cameras can take panoramas of the rover and its surroundings.
In the coming weeks, Perseverance will test its robotic arm and take its first, short drive. 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.
After that, Perseverance will begin its primary mission of looking for rock and soil samples that could help scientists determine if Mars was once inhabited by tiny lifeforms.