Sci Ch. - Spaces Deepest Secrets Hunt for the Mars Aliens (2020)

Spaces Deepest Secrets Hunt for the Mars Aliens

NASA's brand-new Mars rover is on the hunt for alien life, and with the help of cutting-edge engineering, scientists embark on a search for fossilized remains, which might prove the Red Planet was once home to a vast ocean and extraterrestrial life.

Snippet from Wikipedia: Perseverance (rover)

Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. It was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on July 30, 2020, at 11:50 UTC. Confirmation that the rover successfully landed on Mars was received on February 18, 2021, at 20:55 UTC. As of 16 July 2024, Perseverance has been active on Mars for 1210 sols (1,244 Earth days, or 3 years, 4 months and 28 days) since its landing. Following the rover's arrival, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing.

Perseverance has a similar design to its predecessor rover, Curiosity, although it was moderately upgraded. It carries seven primary payload instruments, nineteen cameras, and two microphones.

The rover also carried the mini-helicopter Ingenuity to Mars, an experimental technology testbed that made the first powered aircraft flight on another planet on April 19, 2021. On January 18, 2024 (UTC), it made its 72nd and final flight, suffering damage on landing to its rotor blades, possibly all four, causing NASA to retire it.

The rover's goals include identifying ancient Martian environments capable of supporting life, seeking out evidence of former microbial life existing in those environments, collecting rock and soil samples to store on the Martian surface, and testing oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere to prepare for future crewed missions.

Mission

Despite the high-profile success of the Curiosity rover landing in August 2012, NASA's Mars Exploration Program was in a state of uncertainty in the early 2010s. Budget cuts forced NASA to pull out of a planned collaboration with the European Space Agency which included a rover mission.

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