Dikhyaa Mohanty 
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars while covering 6.5 meters across the Martian landscape and lasted for 33 minutes.
As per NASA’s official report, the drive propelled the rover forward four meters, where it then turned in place 150 degrees to the left and backed up 2.5 meters into its new temporary parking space and lasted for about 33 minutes. As the official team members checked out the drive served as mobility and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance.
The NASA report further stated that once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, it is expected to have regular commutes extending 200 meters. The first trek of the agency’s largest, most advanced rover yet on the Red Planet marks a major milestone before science operations get underway.
Anais Zarifian, Perseverance rover mobility testbed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California stated that these are the few first-time events that successfully measured up in significance to that of the first drive when it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets. She further added that the rover’s six-wheel-drive responded superbly and the whole team is confident the drive system is good to go, capable of taking the science lead over the next two years.
The rover was launched on July 30 last year from the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in the US state of Florida and arrived at the red planet on February 18 after a 203-day journey traversing 472 million kilometers.
The main aim of the mission is to search for signs of ancient life on the Red planet and to characterize the planet’s geology and past climate for future human exploration. Even this will be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Image Source – Twitter
