Fact check: Mars sunset first captured in 1976 by Viking 1 lander usatoday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from usatoday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
12 Mar 2021 Share:
During it s first week on the planet s surface, NASA s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and its Earthbound team has been carefully test driving all onboard systems. This culminated in a more literal test drive as the rover took it s first short foray across the surface the Martian landscape and delivered further historic footage from its highly sophisticated onboard cameras. Covering 21.3 feet (6.5 meters), the drive lasted 33 minutes and produced images of the rover s own landing area.
Image: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover wiggles its wheels on March 4, 2021, the day Perseverance completed its first drive on Mars. Taken from the Navigation Cameras (Navcams), this view shows the front left wheel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mar 8, 2021
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars on 4 March, covering 6,5m across the Martian landscape.
The drive served as a mobility test that marks just one of many milestones as team members check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance. Once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, regular commutes extending 200m or more are expected.
“When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” says Anais Zarifian, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mobility test bed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This was our first chance to ‘kick the tires’ and take Perseverance out for a spin. The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years.”