In a few days it will be four years since the duo formed by the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter left Earth bound for the red planet. About six and a half months later, after travelling a distance of approximately 200 million kilometres, many of us were thrilled to learn that the journey had been successfully completed (and even more so to see the images of its landing) and that, therefore, both vehicles were now ready to undertake all the tasks of the MARS 2020 mission.
In this years, Perseverance has been working at a good pacealthough a problem affecting one of its instruments was identified earlier this year. Ingenuity, for its part, had planned five flights over the Martian surface but, after completing them, mission control determined that they could extend its life much longer than initially planned. And so much so that, despite the fact that an accident caused the breakage of one of its blades and, consequently, its end, it said goodbye to service after having completed a whopping 72 flights.
This type of mission always tends to address several objectives, and in the case of MARS 2020 the objectives for Perseverance were (and still are, in fact, since the rover remains very active) the taking of various samples of the planet’s surface and the search for signs that allow us to verify whether there may have been life on the red planet at one timeThis is why the mission’s location, Jezero Crater, was chosen, as it is known that in ancient times it housed a lake, and the relationship between water and life is well known.
Well, when the rover has already been exploring for almost three and a half years, a very promising discovery has been made, according to NASA reports, Perseverance has found a rock that could be confirmation that there was life on Mars in the remote pastOf course, the US space agency is being very cautious, stating that what appear to be fossil signals could also have other origins unrelated to the presence of life on the planet.
We must also remember, as we have done on other occasions, that We are talking about microbial life formsand when we talk about the past we are referring to billions of years ago, when the conditions on Mars were more conducive to life. In other words, we are not talking about complex life forms, to the dismay of conspiracy theorists who, obviously, have already started publishing messages saying that NASA is hiding the findings of Perseverance from us (and it is curious that they do so, precisely, when the agency has made this announcement).
Source: www.muycomputer.com
