Description
Added on the 14/07/2020 08:23:20 - Copyright : AFP EN
NASA's most advanced Mars rover, Perseverance, will launch from Earth on July 30 on a mission to seek out signs of ancient microbial life on what was once a river delta three-and-a-half billion years ago.
NASA's most advanced Mars rover, Perseverance, will launch from Earth on July 30 on a mission to seek out signs of ancient microbial life on what was once a river delta three-and-a-half billion years ago.
After a seven-month journey, NASA's Perseverance rover prepares to touch down on Mars on Thursday after first negotiating a risky landing procedure that will mark the start of its multi-year search for signs of ancient microbial life. "We know Mars had water at one point, we know that it was habitable, it could have had life at one point. That's why we're going back and looking for it," Perseverance deputy project manager, Jennifer Trosper, tells AFPTV.
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has collected its first two rock samples, both slightly wider than a pencil in diameter and about six centimeters long, and now stored in sealed tubes in the rover's interior. NASA is hoping to return the samples to Earth for in depth lab analysis in a joint mission with the European Space Agency sometime in the 2030s.
After seven months in space, NASA's Perseverance rover overcame a tense landing phase with a series of perfectly executed maneuvers to gently float down to the Martian soil Thursday and embark on its mission to search for signs of past life. FRANCE 24's Alyssa Caverley reports from Los Angeles.