Car size Perseverance Rover to land on Mars soon, to start Red Planet exploration

NASA has been sending land rovers for nearly a decade on Mars to find more details about this red planet. The latest addition is the Perseverance, which will land on Mars on February 18. According to an article published on space.com, this land rover was launched by NASA by using the Atlas V Rocket on July 30, 2020. This land rover is a crucial part of the ambitious Mars 2020 mission, which is costing $2.7 billion.

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More details about this land rover

According to space.com, the perseverance mars rover at present has a mission cycle of one Martian year, which is equivalent to 687 Earth days. It is 10 ten feet long, 7 feet tall, and 9 feet wide rover, which is nearly the size of a regular size car. The perseverance rover weighs 1050 kilograms and is weighed less than a regular car.

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This Mars rover looks familiar as it is based on the design of the earlier Mars land rover named the Curiosity. The new rover comes with the framework based on this old model, and scientists at the Mars science laboratory used the old technology alongside new ones to create this new rover.

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NASA released an official statement in 2017 regarding this land rover launched on Mars. Jim Watzin, who is the Director of the Mars Exploration Programme, said that reusing old hardware and models often helps NASA to minimize the chances of a failed mission and also cuts down the cost. Just like the Curiosity Land Rover, Perseverance also has six wheels, one robotic arm, and one hand alongside multiple cameras, machines, and a drill to collect rock samples from the surface of Mars.

It also has some advanced machines since it is ground-penetrating radar. It will dig holes on the Martian surface and will study and sample the rock layers, ice layers, and water layers up to 10 meters deep from the surface.

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Its mission

The mission of this new land rover is different than its predecessors. Its main mission is to find if there is any kind of life on Mars. It will try to find biosignatures on Mars from its past. The X-ray spectrometer and the ultraviolet laser will aid this rover to find any traces of the erstwhile life forms living on Mars.

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Science.com quoted George Tahru, who is the executive head of the Perseverance mission, as saying, "Our next instruments will build on the success of MSL, which was a proving ground for new technology.". He also said that this mission would make it easy for the upcoming missions on Mars to find life on Earth.