Percivirence of the United States unveils first color photo just before landing on Mars

Input 2021.02.21 09:08

On the 18th (local time), exploration rover Perseverance, who landed on Mars, sent a color photo of it to Earth just before it landed on Mars.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on the 19th, Percivirance sent the picture along with the explanation that “this picture captured me in the air just before my wheel hit the surface of Mars.” This photo, taken with a camera attached to a jetpack, shows dust rising from the Mars grounds from a reverse-propelled rocket engine that slows down Percivirance’s descent.

At a press conference, NASA said, “This picture is something we’ve never seen before.” Along with the nebula photograph, it was given meaning that it would be a symbol showing the history of human space exploration.

NASA also unveiled a picture of an exploration rover unfolding a parachute and rapidly descending into the Jezero Crater as an example of a landing site. The scene was captured by a high-resolution camera from a Mars orbiter 700 km away.

Persivirance will perform various missions for 687 days, which is equivalent to one year on Mars. The biggest task is to find traces of life that might have existed on ancient Mars. For this purpose, Percivirence divides samples of soil and rocks into dozens of tubes and stores them until another rover, which will be launched later, arrives. The collected samples will be delivered to other spacecraft and sent to Earth in 2031.

In preparation for living on Mars, Persivirance explores the underground space where the space base will be built with a radar that sees up to 10m underground, and conducts experiments to create oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Above all, it plans to focus on searching for water to provide drinking water and fuel for astronauts.

Mars is known to have an atmospheric pressure of only 0.6% of the Earth, so liquid water evaporates immediately when exposed to the atmosphere. However, it is estimated that a large amount of water is mixed with ice in the basement of the polar and mid-latitude regions. It is also observed that there will be a considerable amount of ice underground in the area that Percivirence intends to explore.

Meanwhile, the United States once again showed off its appearance as a space power through this project, which invested about 2,987 trillion won ($2.7 billion). Since NASA first sent the Mariner probe to Mars in 1965, it has completed 20 exploration missions, and has successfully landed on Mars for the 9th time, starting with the Viking 1 in 1976.