Nasa’s Perseverance rover in ‘great shape’ after Mars landing

NASA has successfully landed its Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars.

The American agency has landed the rover in a deep crater near the planet’s equator named Jezero.

“The good news is the spacecraft, I think, is in great shape,” said Matt Wallace, the mission’s deputy project manager.

According to the international news agency, the six-wheeled rover will now spend at least two years drilling into the local rocks and looking for evidence of past life.

According to sources, Jezero is thought to have held giant lake billions of years ago. There is a possibility that life may exist when there has been water.

The signal alerting controllers that Perseverance was down and safely reached 20:55 GMT.

Engineers at NASA were excited when they got the confirmation of the rover’s landing. The joy continued when the two images can in.

The rover had come down about 2km to the southeast of the delta feature in Jezera that it plans to investigate, according to the post-landing analysis.

“We are in a nice flat spot. The vehicle is only tilted by about 1.2 degrees,” said Allen Chen, who led the landing team. “So we did successfully find that parking lot and have a safe rover on the ground. And I couldn’t be more proud of my team for doing that.”

Steve Jurczyk, the acting administrator at Nasa, also saluted the achievement: “What a credit to the team. Just what an amazing team to work through all the adversity and all the challenges that go with landing a rover on Mars, plus the challenges of Covid. Just an amazing accomplishment.”

And Mike Watkins, the director of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the home of the agency’s Mars missions, added: “There is something special about the first few days (of the mission) because we have just landed a representative of Planet Earth on a place on Mars that no-one has ever been to.”

President Joe Biden also congratulated the team.

Congratulations to NASA and everyone whose hard work made Perseverance’s historic landing possible. Today proved once again that with the power of science and American ingenuity, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. pic.twitter.com/NzSxW6nw4k

— President Biden (@POTUS) February 18, 2021

Advertisement

“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.” – @NASAJPL director Mike Watkins on @NASAPersevere‘s view of Jezero Crater after its #CountdownToMars landing. pic.twitter.com/NzUGJp7wAc

— NASA (@NASA) February 18, 2021