Another significant milestone occurred on March 2, or Sol 12, when engineers unstowed the rover’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm for the first time, flexing each of its five joints over the course of two hours.įlexing Perseverance's Robotic Arm: This set of images shows parts of the robotic arm on NASA’s Perseverance rover flexing and turning during its first checkout after landing on Mars. More recently, the controllers checked out Perseverance’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment ( RIMFAX) and Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment ( MOXIE) instruments, and deployed the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer ( MEDA) instrument’s two wind sensors, which extend out from the rover’s mast. 26 – Perseverance’s eighth Martian day, or sol, since landing – mission controllers completed a software update, replacing the computer program that helped land Perseverance with one they will rely on to investigate the planet. The rover’s mobility system is not only thing getting a test drive during this period of initial checkouts. Perseverance Wiggles a Wheel: NASA’s Perseverance rover wiggles one of its wheels in this set of images obtained by the rover’s left Navigation Camera on March 4, 2021. To help better understand the dynamics of a retrorocket landing on the Red Planet, engineers used Perseverance’s Navigation and Hazard Avoidance Cameras to image the spot where Perseverance touched down, dispersing Martian dust with plumes from its engines. The drive, which lasted about 33 minutes, propelled the rover forward 13 feet (4 meters), where it then turned in place 150 degrees to the left and backed up 8 feet (2.5 meters) into its new temporary parking space. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years.” The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. “This was our first chance to ‘kick the tires’ and take Perseverance out for a spin. “When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” said Anais Zarifian, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mobility test bed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, regular commutes extending 656 feet (200 meters) or more are expected. The drive served as a mobility test that marks just one of many milestones as team members check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance. NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars March 4, covering 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across the Martian landscape. The first trek of the agency’s largest, most advanced rover yet on the Red Planet marks a major milestone before science operations get under way.
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