NASA Shares An Image Of Perseverance Rover's First Martian Drive
NASA announced this week that the Perseverance rover has taken its first cruise along the surface of Mars. So far, the rover has a mere 21 feet under its belt when it comes to Martian operations. Its first cruise was a short semicircular path around Jezero Crater. NASA controllers took the first drive very slowly, with the test drive spanning 33 minutes, and controllers say it went "incredibly well."
The image seen above was sent back by Perseverance and shows its first tracks left on the Red Planet's surface. The first drive for Perseverance happened on March 4. Future drives for the lander will be much longer than its first, typically averaging about 656 feet or more. Mission controllers say that the Rover's six-wheel-drive responded as expected, and they are confident the drive system is good to go and capable of taking the rover wherever it needs to go over the next few years.
The first drive had the rover move forward 13 feet, where it performed a 150-degree turn to the left and reversed for eight-feet. The motion allowed the rover to aim its camera at its landing site. Mission controllers also received other images from Perseverance that showed data about the landing site, named Octavia E. Butler Landing to honorary late science-fiction author born in Pasadena, California.
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is managing the Perseverance mission, which is based in Pasadena. Butler was the first African-American woman to win the Hugo Award and Nebula Award for her science-fiction. Currently, NASA is continuing the Perseverance health checks to ensure that all of its systems are operating as expected before the journey across Jezero Crater begins in earnest.
Since the rover landed, it has received a software update to help better explore Mars and has been testing out several on-board instruments. The rover has also deployed wind sensors on the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer instrument and has been operating its seven-foot-long robotic arm. Perseverance has sent about 7000 images back to Earth since landing.