NASA's Perseverance is a rover meant to collect rock samples and possibly discover ancient life on Mars!
Written by Arman Shali
Amazing Astronomy Magazine™
It has been around four years since Persenverance landed on Mars. NASA plans to retrive the samples of rock & soil in future missions. Perserverance drops the samples on the surface for retrival in 2 different missions: A lander mission, in which the samples will be picked up and put into the Mars Ascent Vehicle, a rocket which will take the samples and release them into space to be caught by the second misson, an orbiter which will (according to JPL) ultimately bring the samples to Earth by 2031. If Perserverance fails to function on Mars in the next 10 years, A backup plan is in place. The lander will pick up samples that have been dropped. Perserverance has already dropped 10 samples on the surface for this purpose, since the original plan requires a direct transfer (Perserverance will go to the lander and drop the samples there).
The technology in Perserverance is truly amazing, being able to do a variety of things including producing oxygen, discovering ancient life, measuring weather, even seeing under the surface! Most of these things seem like small feats on Earth, but are something awesome on Mars if compared to Earth. Earth has habitable conditions with few natural disasters that can support all the life here. Mars, on the other hand, has harsher conditions and is missing the very things we need to survive. What Perserverance has done is astronomical.
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