Celebrations around the world marked the historic touchdown of NASA Persevere at her new home: Mars. Picture: Twitter/@NASA
Faizel Patel – 19/02/2021
After seven months in space, NASA’s Perseverance rover has landed safely on the Martian surface and embarked on its mission to search for signs of past life.
Mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena erupted in cheers as the rover touched down on Thursday.
Shortly after landing, the rover sent back its first black-and-white images, revealing a rocky field at the landing site in the Jezero Crater, just north of the Red Planet’s equator.
Speaking to Radio Islam on Friday, space security and technologies expert at the Defence Studies and Analyses Institute in India Ajey Lele says the touchdown of the Perseverance rover was a copybook landing.
“That spot particularly which was announced by NASA was a perfect spot where it has reached. So there were good expectations and it was expected that everything would go well and precisely as it was planned earlier.”
Lele says the Perseverance rover has long-term objective on the red planet.
“Almost 50% of the Mars missions have not been successful. Whatever the missions, which have been undertaken by the US, they have been successful and over a period of time, they have generated a lot amount of data. They have really scanned the entire periphery of Mars. They know what is the geology, topography and terrain of that particular planet now.”
Lele says the Perseverance rover will also search for signs of life on Mars.
“You got a possibility of existence of life on the surface of Mars as compared to any other planet because we find a lot of similarities between Mars and Earth.”
More images, video of the descent and perhaps the first sounds of Mars ever recorded by microphones are expected in the coming hours as the rover relays data to overhead satellites.
The US is also preparing for an eventual human mission to the planet sometime in the 2030’s.
Listen to the interview with Ajey Lele
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