The arrival of Perseverance

After 203 days of travel and 470 million of kilometers, Perseverance finally landed on Mars. The rover of the Nasa will now study the red planet, by trying to discover is there was never life on the planet.

The seven minutes of terror

Doing a controlled landing on Mars, 470 million of kilometers away, is the most complicated part of the whole mission. The rovers need only seven minutes to land, but the Nasa called them “the seven minutes of terror”, because anything can happen during this bunch of minutes.

Because of the huge distance it is impossible to control the situation from remote and Perseverance was completely alone during the landing phase.

The Nasa said that the Perseverance one was the safest landing on Mars ever, but one remains with the bated breath for that seven minutes of terror anyway.

During all of its travel the rover was protected, inside its heat shield. The shield protected it during its entrance in the martial atmosphere, during which it reached a speed of 1600 km/h. To slowing down it had to open the parachute, at an altitude of 11 thousand meters.

Once opened the parachute Perseverance had to say goodbye to its heat shield, that protected it for the whole time, and, for the first time, it was completely exposed to the martial atmosphere.

The last minute was the most dangerous. Perseverance activated the retrorockets and it landed on the planet as softer as possible.

Perseverance landed on Mars!

At the end of the seven minutes of terror, Perseverance safely landed on Mars. It was the 18th of february of the 2021.

All of us had to wait other twelve minutes before to receive the confirme that the rover was completely safe on the planet Mars.

Perseverance launched a message for the Earth, where it said that everything went well, but when we received the message it was already few mintues that it was on the ground.

The landing place is the crater Jezero, almost 50 kilometers large, in the area of the big valley Isidis Planitia. Jezero means lake, in many different slavic languages. And it was right this one the reason for which the place was chosen as the target of the mission.

The researchers are almost sure that in that area there is the bed of a death river, which leaded into a lake, in the lake Jezero, rightly. The rover will so have the duty to confirme these theory, by confirming even the fact that back in time Mars was flourish and rich of water. And meanwhile it will look for the clues of the presence of life.

And now Perseverance is looking forward to start its mission, on its new home.

The first pictures from Mars!

Perseverance in on Mars for four days now, but it already sent us some astonishing pictures.

The very first ones show the rover in the last phases of the landing, before to touch the ground. There is then a picture that shows the martian soil: here you have the new house of Perseverance! We can see the rover that become confident with the ground, here you have, infact, appearing the wheels that very soon will leave the tracks of its route on the sand of the planet.

Sand, stones, rocks and pebbles, with the Mars’ hills on the horizon. That’s one of the first postcards that Perseverance sent us from Mars.

What will Perseverance do now?

Perseverance very soon will start its mission, by examinating the soil behind it. It will have to look clues of living beings, that maybe populated Mars billions of years ago. Perseverance will have to look for molecular fossils.

But not only. For the first time Perseverance will store some material to send back on Earth. Inside it, infact, there are 43 test tubes in titanium, where the rover will store a small stock of material that, a future mission, will take to bring back on Earth.

The mission just started, a flourish future is waiting for the rover. Meanwhile it’s still getting confindent with Mars, with the one that will be its forever home.

This post is also available in: Italiano