Thread: Three cheers for Perseverance! Successful landing at Jezero Crater!!

Now we can hope for some very serious analyses of potential past life on the Red Planet!

What are they going to find in the lake-bed in Jezero Crater?

The dry lake-bed it landed in is expected to have rocks dating back 3.5 bya. Major opportunity here.

And how will that helicopter work out?! Way cool!

Very exciting that we have a soft landing and appear ready for amazing new discoveries!!

https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance/

See the link below for a simulation of the entry and the Sky Crane that delivered this robotic rover to the surface.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210215.html

The Mars Perseverance rover, which most of you should know, in addition to its many activities, is collecting samples from places that it visits and stowing them into a sample return container (1). A future mission is expected to retrieve this container and send it back to earth. The sample return launch system is what Northrop Grumman will build (2). Also required will be a sample retrieval rover, and an orbital return spacecraft to accept the samples from Mars and return them to earth.

That doesn't sound too tricky. At least not much more difficult than putting this rover safely down with a sky crane. They are getting very good at this stuff.

1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...rth-180977056/

2. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...-sample-return