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Perseverance

Details

Perseverance is a semi-autonomous rover the size of a small car designed to explore the surface of Mars. It carries cameras and scientific equipment to search for evidence of past microbial life. The rover landed on Mars on 18 February 2021.

Creator
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Year
2020
Type
Aerospace
Creator
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Year
2020
Type
Aerospace

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Did You Know?

Perseverance's nickname is Percy.
Tucked under the belly of Perseverance is a little helicopter called Ingenuity.
The Mars helicopter Ingenuity will attempt the first powered flight on another planet.
According to NASA, the Perseverance's mission is to identify and collect rock and soil samples, which a future mission could retrieve and bring back to Earth for more detailed study.
For the first time, Perseverance will be taking along a couple of microphones so that we can hear what Mars sounds like.

Specs

FEATURES
Perseverance is only a few centimeters larger than its predecessor Curiosity, but is over 100 kg heavier. It carries a large turret on the end of its robotic arm, which includes a coring drill and other scientific tools. It also has five more cameras than Curiosity (for a total of 23), and is equipped with a pair of microphones.
HEIGHT
220 cm | 87 in
LENGTH
300 cm | 118.1 in
WIDTH
270 cm | 106 in
WEIGHT
1025 kg | 2,260 lb
SPEED
0.15 km/h | 0.1 mph

SENSORS
Seven science instruments, including Mastcam-Z, a color camera capable of panoramic and stereoscopic imagery, and SuperCam, a combination camera, rock-vaporizing laser, and spectrometer that can identify the composition of rocks and soil. Other sensors include a close-range microscopic camera and spectrometer, ground-penetrating radar, and sensors to measure temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, and atmospheric dust characteristics.
ACTUATORS
N/A
POWER
Radioisotope thermoelectric generator (converts heat from plutonium-238 into electricity). Two lithium-ion rechargeable batteries to meet peak power demand.
COMPUTING
Processor: Radiation-hardened central processor with PowerPC 750 Architecture: a BAE RAD 750 operating at up to 200 MHz. Memory: 2 GB of flash memory, 256 MB DRAM, 256 KB of EEPROM.
SOFTWARE
N/A
DEGREES OF FREEDOM (DOF)
N/A
MATERIALS
Main materials are aluminum and titanium. The chassis, the core of the rover, has insulated surfaces to house the electronics.
COST
Approximately US $2.75 billion over 11 years
STATUS
Ongoing
WEBSITE
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

History

After the success of the Curiosity rover, NASA decided to send a second large rover to Mars. While Perseverance looks much like Curiosity, NASA learned many important lessons from Curiosity's years on Mars, and Perseverance includes more durable wheels, a bigger and stronger robotic arm, more cameras, and improved autonomous capabilities, which will allow it to do more driving without as much reliance on instructions from Earth. Jezero Crater was selected as a landing site for Perseverance, because the ancient crater used to be full of water, with rivers flowing in and out of it. Perseverance will explore the ancient lake bed and river deltas, collecting samples of dirt and rock which it will store in tubes to one day be retrieved by a different robot and brought back to Earth. Perseverance successfully landed on Mars on February 19, 2021.