A month ago, Perseverance made a memorable landing on the surface of Mars. Since then, the teams have been working to check the rover's instruments. We also have several audio recordings available. Researchers are now gearing up for its next big step in the mission:getting Ingenuity to fly.
A month ago, on February 18, 2021, the American rover Perseverance landed smoothly in the Jezero crater. During these first weeks on Mars, the mission team checked the vehicle's seven scientific instruments and its various subsystems, confirming that everything was going according to plan.
“So far so good “said Ken Farley of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Tuesday. "We haven't had any major technical issues ".
One of the first technical feats of this mission was capturing the sounds of the rover moving around the planet. This is a great first!
The audio was recorded during a 27.3 meter trip operated on March 7 . We then hear the many squeaks and rattles of the six-wheeled robot as it moves on the Martian soil.
"A lot of people, when they see the pictures, don't realize that the wheels are metal “, explains Vandi Verma, principal engineer and rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "When you drive with these wheels on rocks, it's actually very noisy ".
The first big step will be to test the Ingenuity rotorcraft. Still nestled in the belly of the rover, it will be released in a few weeks. The mission team has just announced that they have found a suitable "aerodrome".
On D-Day, the small 1.8 kg helicopter will activate its blades at nearly 2,900 revolutions per minute in an attempt to rise to a height of three meters for approximately thirty seconds. If successful, it will be the first flight ever attempted on another planet.
During this time, Perseverance will stand at a safe distance and attempt to document this historic flight with his Mastcam-Z. “We plan to use our video capability and our telephoto capability “, said researcher Jim Bell, of Arizona State University. "It will be very exciting and we look forward to these historic films ".
The rover will also be able to record audio from Ingenuity's flight thanks to its two onboard microphones.
In the meantime, researchers already charged the rotorcraft's six lithium-ion batteries to about 30% capacity a few days ago in an effort to "keep it warm" . JPL plans to repeat these charging sessions weekly while awaiting deployment to the Martian surface.
Once this flight is closed, Perseverance will seriously dive into its scientific work to search for traces of past life in Jezero Crater. As a reminder, between three and four billion years ago, this 45 km wide formation housed a large lake into which a river flowed.
The mission team has already plotted an attempted traverse leading the rover through the ancient delta of this crater where fossil remains may have been preserved.
The current plan also provides sample caching. They will then be set aside to be brought back to Earth in the early 2030s as part of a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
In the meantime, the JPL team has already uploaded more than 10,000 photos taken by the rover which you can browse here. Enjoy!
