NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Covers Record Distance in a Day

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has set a file on the Red Planet. Thanks to its self-driving perform, the rover has lined the best distance in a single Martian day, or sol, by any rover on the planet. Perseverance, which was launched on July 30, 2020, and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, just lately lined a file 245.76m in a single Martian day, which is barely longer than in the future on Earth. The intention of the Perseverance rover and its accompanying helicopter Ingenuity is to search out indicators of historic life on the planet.

“After a few months exploring this area, I’m on the move,” acknowledged a tweet from the official Perseverance deal with. The tweet added that the rover can now cowl extra distance in in the future than ever earlier than due to its self-driving perform. The tweet carried a picture that confirmed the rover’s tracks on the Martian floor.

According to a NASA report, the earlier file for longest drive on Mars was held by its Opportunity rover, which travelled 214m in a single day in 2015.

Perseverance is at present busy roaming across the planet collecting rock samples to ship again to Earth by way of future human missions to Mars. While transferring the pattern to its storage, it had choked its methods in December. After nearly every week of complicated operations, engineers have been capable of get the rover again to correct functioning.

Perseverance will now try a multi-kilometre drive to the close by delta. But earlier than that, it’s scouting the world to verify it has not left something to likelihood. Deltas are areas the place water as soon as flowed. They may maintain info that might assist scientists examine whether or not there was microbial life on Mars way back.

NASA stated in a weblog that the Perseverance staff has been “taking long-distance observations” of the delta and layers alongside Artuby ridge to organize the staff for its subsequent part of science operations.