A high-resolution camera from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the Perseverance rover after landing on the Red Planet last month, showing the nuclear-powered robot sitting on the Martian surface with its supersonic parachute and other components of the landing system scattered over the nearby.
The MRO’s high-resolution imaging experiment, or HiRISE, captured images of the Perseverance rover in the Jezero crater in several passages over the landing site after the spacecraft arrived on the Red Planet on February 18. A HiRISE image taken on February 24 shows the rover and its surroundings in false colors, with scars on the Martian surface carved by Perseverance’s retro rockets just before it touches the ground.
The HiRISE instrument is the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet. Developed at the University of Arizona, the camera has a telescope and is used to map the Martian surface, study the planet’s geology and explore landing sites for future missions.
The MRO captured the February 24 image of Perseverance at a distance of about 180 miles (290 kilometers), according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover measures about 10 feet by 9 feet (3 by 2.7 meters) in size.
The Mars orbiter also caught a glimpse of the rover’s parachute a few kilometers northwest of the Perseverance landing site. The parachute was launched after the rover entered the atmosphere and slowed the ship down to subsonic speed. This was followed by the launch of the spacecraft’s thermal shield, which plummeted to the Martian surface. Its wreckage was located east of the rover’s landing site.
About a minute before the touch, the parachute and the upper part of the rover’s aeroshell, called the backshell, separated and a rocket-powered jetpack guided the Perseverance the rest of the way to the surface. Eight rocket motors with variable thrust removed the rest of the spacecraft’s vertical speed and the robot descended under the descent stage on three nylon brakes.
The Perseverance landed on its six wheels, and the descent stage cut its connection to the rover and flew northwest in a detour maneuver to escape a safe distance from the rover. The impact location of the descent stage is also visible on HiRISE images from MRO.
Perseverance is on a $ 2.7 billion mission to study whether the site of the Jezero crater, which once housed a lake of liquid water, was habitable for ancient Martian life forms. The rover landed near sediment deposited by a dry river that fed the lake at Jezero, and scientists plan to take Perseverance to the delta’s deposits to collect rock samples for a possible return to Earth.
The one-ton Mars rover also carries instruments to track the Martian climate, measure the composition of rocks and has the first microphone and zoom camera to fly to the Red Planet.
Perseverance also has an instrument to demonstrate the production of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars, a capability that can help future human space travelers.
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