(ORDO NEWS) — Perseverance celebrates its second anniversary on the surface of Mars on February 18th.
Since arriving at Jezero Crater in 2021, the nuclear-powered six-wheeled rover has been studying geological features and collecting samples of the Red Planet, which are key to the first phase of the campaign to bring samples back from Mars.
Scientists want to study Martian samples using powerful laboratory equipment on Earth to look for signs of ancient microbial life and better understand the processes that shaped the surface of Mars.
The Perseverance campaign has verified and collected data on hundreds of intriguing geological features, collected 15 rock cores, and created the first sample repository on another planet.
The rover also took two regolith samples and one atmospheric sample and sealed three “witness” tubes.
Numbers play a big role in a rover’s mission because statistics provide the best and most effective representation of hardware trends and performance.
For example, the mission team might tell you that the rover has traveled 14.97 kilometers and, as of February 14, its left front wheel has completed 9423 revolutions.
MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) produced 92.11 grams of oxygen, and the Gas Dust Removal Tool (gDRT), a small dust removal device on the robotic arm, was released 62 times to clean residual dust and particles.
Here are some of the most up-to-date statistics for Perseverance’s first two years on the surface of the Lake. They all highlight how productive the mission was.
During these two years, the SuperCam scientific instrument took 230,554 laser images.
The RIMFAX radar made 676,828 soundings to study underground rock layers.
The SuperCam microphone made 662 audio recordings of Mars.
The SHERLOC device made 4,337,010 laser images. With its help, spectroscopy was carried out 33 times.
Weather data on Mars recorded by MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) – 15,769.1.
PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) worked for 298.2 hours.
Perseverance is equipped with seven science chambers and nine engineering chambers. Together, these cameras took over 166,000 pictures.
The main robotic arm of the rover was taken out and put in 64 times. During the operation of the manipulator, 48 drills were replaced.
The distance traveled by the z-stage of the manipulator for processing samples of the rover is 206.1 meters.
“Behind every number is a lot of work from a very talented group of women and men from the Perseverance team,” said Art Thompson, Project Manager for Perseverance.
“We’ve come a long way together and I can’t think of a better band to work with.”
In fact, when Perseverance celebrates its second anniversary, Mars will be 156 million kilometers from Earth.
The weather in Lake Jezero Crater is expected to be sunny with temperatures around minus 14 degrees Celsius.
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