- The NASA Perseverance rover SuperCam instrument showed its first results earlier this week.
- Lazer shootings determined the nature of the rock targets being examined.
- Insider takes a look at the latest developments in the six-wheeled robot.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
The SuperCam scientific instrument from NASA’s Perseverance rover showed its first results earlier this week, after hitting a rock at leisure.
The SuperCam is a device that studies rocks and soil with a camera, leisure and spectrometers to identify organic compounds that may be related to past lives on Mars. It can identify the atomic and molecular composition of targets up to 6 meters away, NASA said.
High-intensity leisure is a technique that was also implemented by NASA’s previous rover, Curiosity.
On Thursday, NASA released an audio tape of its rover hitting a target rock called “Máaz”. Recording the leisure attacks allowed scientists to discover more useful information, including the harshness of the subjects being examined. “If we hit a hard surface, we will not hear the same sound as when shooting at a soft surface,” said Naomi Murdoch, of the French National Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space, in Toulouse, by BBC News.
Scientists were able to reveal that Máaz was basaltic, meaning that it contained a substantial amount of magnesium and iron, BBC News reported.
They have yet to discover whether the “rock itself is fiery, that is, volcanic, or perhaps whether it is a sedimentary rock composed of fiery grains that were taken downstream to Lake Jezero and cemented together,” said the chief investigator of the SuperCam, Roger Wiens, in a BBC News report.
Main developments in Perseverance so far
Since its historic landing last month, the Perseverance rover has delivered a series of high-resolution images and audio recordings from Martian terrain to Earth.
One of the rover’s first developments was its camera providing front and rear images of the successful landing of Perseverance on Mars. This was followed by audio recordings from microphones that were attached to the rover. They revealed the sounds of a Martian breeze – the first sounds in history to be recorded on the planet.
The wind blew at 5 meters per second (11 mph), according to Dave Gruel, NASA’s chief engineer for Perseverance’s camera and microphone systems.
A 360-degree panorama obtained by the Mastcam-Z tool from the rover was another important establishment, as it allowed people to take a complete look around the robot’s home in the Jezero crater.
Earlier this month, the six-wheeled robot made its first trip on Mars. As he drove, the rover took pictures of the tracks of the wheels on the ground behind him. NASA’s Perseverance engineers and scientists are already planning routes for the rover to travel to reach the river delta that once fed Lake Jezero, as the Insider previously reported.
“Our first trip went incredibly well,” said Anais Zarifian, who works on the rover’s mobility team, at a news conference. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see the wheel marks, and I’ve seen many of them.”