Perseverance has landed to the surface of Mars
The American automatic interplanetary station with the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, placed into Mars orbit, made a successful landing on Thursday to the surface of the Red Planet, according to the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The landing took about seven minutes. Approximately three minutes after landing, the spacecraft transmitted the first black and white picture from the planet’s surface. The American automatic interplanetary station was launched to Mars on July 30 last year. Perseverance is already the fifth American Mars rover that NASA has launched to study the Red Planet. It is the largest rover in the world, weighing up to 1025 kg, 3 meters long, and 2.7 meters wide. It is fitted out with a lot of research equipment. It has a drill for sampling from Martian soil, where the rover will look for signs of microbial life, a robotic arm, video cameras, tools for chemical and mineralogical analysis of soil, an X-ray spectrometer with a thermal imager, and an ultraviolet spectrometer for detecting organic matter. In addition, it is equipped with a special apparatus MOXIE, which will try to generate oxygen from carbon dioxide present in the Martian atmosphere, as well as microphones and sensors for meteorological observations. It is assumed that the new rover will be able to operate on Mars for 687 Earth days. Ingenuity, 1.2 meters in diameter and 1.8 kg in weight, will be the first helicopter to operate on Mars. It is equipped with two cameras and is capable of hovering in the air for 20-30 seconds to photograph the area. The cost of the American Mars mission is estimated $ 3 billion dollars.
