After many months of work, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has finally launched for the Red Planet. The launch took place from the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral on July 30 aboard the ULA's Atlas V rocket. NASA has detailed this success, explaining that Perseverance was put into parking orbit...and soon after the rover put itself into safe mode, potentially due to cold temperatures.
NASA is remembering one of its most notable July 4th events: the arrival of its Sojourner on Mars in 1997. Depending on your age, you may not be familiar with Sojourner, having instead learned about Curiosity, the now-defunct Opportunity, and perhaps even the Spirit rover, which was active on the Red Planet from 2004 to 2010. Lesser known is the space agency's Sojourner, a rover that paved the way for NASA's latest and greatest Mars missions.
NASA has equipped its Mars rover Perseverance with two tools named after a popular fictional duo. Called "Sherloc" and Watson, each tool is part of a system that will enable NASA to investigate Mars rocks as small as a grain of sand. Sherloc is located on the rover's robotic arm; it includes a laser and spectrometers that work alongside the Watson camera.
Many people might not understand the fuss over a new rover that lands and rolls over the moon, Mars, or even an asteroid. After all, isn't it just a crude looking car that happens to have gone outer space? It's easy to take for granted that these aren't remote-controlled vehicles but are pretty much the self-driving cars that we can only dream of here on Earth. These rovers have to navigate literally alien terrain mostly on their own and, as this Mini Rover prototype demonstrates, needs to avoid sand traps without much human assistance.
In an update on its Mars Perseverance rover, NASA said that it's still on track to launch the machine this summer despite the pandemic. Social distancing efforts have forced many people to work from home, but that hasn't stopped some teams from continuing their efforts and that includes many of the experts working on Perseverance. If everything goes as planned, the rover will reach Mars in early 2021.
NASA has announced that as part of its final assembly of the Perseverance rover, its team has installed the parachute, off-road wheels, and air brakes. The wheels are machined from flight-grade aluminum, according to NASA, which used titanium for the spokes. The parachute, meanwhile, will be used to slow down the rover on its descent to the Red Planet's surface when it arrives early next year.
Last week at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA wrapped up what it says was 'important testing' involving the small helicopter that will be shipped with its Perseverance Mars rover next year. This was the last time the helicopter's rotor blades will spin until the vehicle arrives on the Martian surface, where NASA hopes to operate the first-ever aircraft on a planet other than Earth.
As first promised earlier this week, NASA has officially announced the name for the rover it has thus far referred to as 'Mars 2020.' Going forward -- and in keeping with the trend established by its past Martian rovers -- this new rover is named 'Perseverance,' and it'll launch for the Red Planet later this year. The winner of the rover naming contest was a middle school student from Virginia.
NASA plans to get a close-up look at water ice located near the Moon's South Pole, the space agency announced on Friday. The mission will involve the VIPER lunar rover, a new 'mobile robot' scheduled to arrive in 2022 ahead of the manned Artemis Moon landing. In addition to observing this water at a close distance, the rover will also take the first sample of ice from the Moon.
Starting today, kindergarten through high school students located in the United States can submit essays to NASA's 'Name the Rover' contest. The space agency is soliciting name suggestions for its Mars 2020 rover, which will be launched for its mission to Mars next year. The contest will be open to students until November 1 and the final selection will be revealed early next year.
We take for granted a lot of gases here on Earth, including our precious oxygen. Even less so gases like methane, which is mostly a waste product of certain living organisms. But when you find unusually high levels of that substances in a planet bereft of life but believed to have once hosted life, it's a pretty big deal. That's the reason why scientists at NASA were more than happy to spend their weekend at work to analyze and do more tests with the data that the Curiosity Rover just sent them from Mars.
NASA has announced that its Curiosity rover confirmed the presence of clay in the Martian region it is exploring. That area, which is called the 'clay-bearing unit,' is the rover's latest point of interest due to what researchers say were signs hinting at the presence of clay minerals. The 'clay cache,' as NASA calls it, was confirmed in a pair of drilling sites called Kilmarie and Aberlady.