NASA’s Perseverance rover has marked another historic day in its pursuit to study the Red Planet. The rover has now completed 100 Sols or Martian days on the planet.
The car-sized rover and its small helicopter partner Ingenuity landed on Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18. That makes June 1 the 100th Martian day for the rover and the chopper. One Mars day or ‘sol’ is equal to 24 hours and 40 minutes on Earth.
More exciting missions in the pipeline
The first 100 sols have been quite exciting for the rover, as it has already tested all its instruments and cameras. It has managed to send back around 75,000 images and recorded the first true audio of Mars. The triumph was backed by Ingenuity’s historic flight and generating oxygen from carbon dioxide on Mars for the first time ever.
The 100 sols benchmark is just the beginning and a lot more exciting stuff is planned for the rover. Perseverance has now shifted focus on science missions, which will be done over the course of one Mars year or 687 Earth days. The two prime goals of the mission are to hunt for early life signs on Mars and collect samples before returning to Earth.
Hunting signs of early life
The Jazero crater is an ideal place for such experiments. The 45km-wide crater is believed to have hosted a big lake and a river delta billions of years ago. The Ingenuity helicopter also has some work left to be done. The chopper has already exceeded NASA’s expectations. It has finished 5 flights since its deployment on Mars by the Perseverance rover.
But since it’s still functional, NASA might assign it new missions to test extraplanetary aviation methods even further. If things go as planned, Ingenuity will take off for the sixth time and examine nearby rock features before reaching another airfield. As per NASA, the sixth flight is the first of the helicopter’s “operations demonstration phase.” It means that the aircraft will now find ways of aerial exploration on Mars that will come in handy during future missions.
