Perseverance

Context

• Indian-origin Vandi Verma drives Perseverance rover on Mars, says it's incredible.

About

• Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the crater Jezero on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission.
• Perseverance has been active on Mars for 130 sols (133 Earth days) since its landing.
• Following the rover's arrival, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing.
• Perseverance has a similar design to its predecessor rover, Curiosity, from which it was moderately upgraded.
• It carries seven primary payload instruments, nineteen cameras, and two microphones.
• The rover also carried the mini-helicopter Ingenuity to Mars, an experimental aircraft and technology showcase that made the first powered flight on another planet on 19 April 2021.

Broad Objectives of Mars 2020 Mission

• Looking for habitability: identify past environments that were capable of supporting microbial life.
• Seeking biosignatures: seek signs of possible past microbial life in those habitable environments, particularly in specific rock types known to preserve signs over time.
• Caching samples: collect core rock and regolith ("soil") samples and store them on the Martian surface.
• Preparing for humans: test oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere.

https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/indian-origin-vandi-verma-drives-perseverance-rover-on-mars-says-it-s-incredible-1823159-2021-07-02