The rover has been climbing the slopes of Mars without its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, for some time and NASA has explained where it has been and where it is now.
The name of the Perseverance spacecraft means perseverance, and since its launch in 2021, the spacecraft has been doggedly making its way to Mars, mapping places where no rover has been before. Its mission is to obtain samples of the planet's rocks, which will be delivered to Earth during a subsequent mission and will be analyzed by researchers in laboratory conditions more comprehensively than would be possible on Mars using the scientific instruments of rovers or landers.
Perseverance began its mission with the Ingenuity helicopter after arriving at the Jezero Crater region in February 2021, and when the Perseverance helicopter waved goodbye after its 72nd flight in January of this year, the rover continued its journey on its own. Perseverance is NASA October 28 advertisement According to him, in the past three and a half years, he has traveled 30 kilometers on this planet, which, if we want to make it clear, is approximately equivalent to the distance from Budapest to Godolo. Of course, the vehicle does not move continuously, but rather stops and examines the environment one by one at a promising location from the point of view of collecting samples, and also performs the long process of obtaining a rock sample if necessary. The vehicle is also sometimes hampered by unexpected obstacles in its progress, for example, at the end of 2021, it had to stop working for a month due to gravel getting into one of the containers and the Ground Control Center staff had to figure out how to resolve the unusual situation.
Perseverance's journey so far and the location of the samples are detailed in a NASA video, which also shows how difficult it is to find the right way through the cliffs and surface formations of Mars.
(Image: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech)
