By: Nour Hany

After a 292.5 million-mile journey, the Perseverance Rover safely landed on Mars, flawlessly. This mission is one of the greatest achievements, not only for NASA or the USA, but globally as well. Needless to say, the team finished their final stage preparation for the mission during the coronavirus pandemic, which made it even more challenging. However, the greatness lies in the mission's purpose of landing on Mars, as it will search for evidence that might give us the answer of whether or not there is any form of life on the red planet.

Perseverance carries a helicopter called Ingenuity, making it the first helicopter to fly on the red planet, as well as Perseverance that will be the first to record sounds on Mars, and the first to search for traces of ancient life on the red planet. Moreover, follow-up missions will return to Earth with collected samples by the 2030s.

“Because of today's exciting events, the first pristine samples from carefully documented locations on another planet are another step closer to being returned to Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. “Perseverance is the first step in bringing back rock and regolith from Mars. We do not know what these pristine samples from Mars will tell us. But what they could tell us is monumental—including that life might have once existed beyond Earth.” He added: “Every time we do a launch or we do a landing, we get two plans. One plan is the one we want to do, and then there is that second plan”. The rover targeted a 28-mile-wide ancient lake bed and river delta, that is considered the most challenging site for a spacecraft landing on the red planet.

“There is something special about the first few days, because we have just landed a representative of the planet Earth on a place on Mars that no one has ever been to” said Mike Watkins, director for JPL.

References

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/18/world/mars-perseverance-rover-landing-scn-trnd/index.html