American space agency NASA is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the landing of Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. The programme will be live-streamed on NASA's official website at 02:30 am IST (4 pm EST) on Friday, February 18, 2022. The SUV-sized rover has been collecting samples from various Martian areas since landing on Earth's neighbor a year ago.
NASA has also released a YouTube link where users can watch the ceremony live.
The samples are scheduled to come to Earth in the 2030s, onboard a Lockheed Martin rocket. The company recently won the contract by NASA to build the rocket.
The goal of the Perseverance mission is to find traces of ancient life on the Red Planet. But these samples will have to be analysed in laboratories back on Earth, capable of more sophisticated tests than anything that can be done on Mars.
In the last one year, the Perseverance rover has sent several pictures from the Red Planet, collected rock samples and even gave us a tour of the Jezero Crater.
In fact, the crater was chosen as the landing site for the rover, which reached Mars on February 18, 2021, because scientists believe the area was once flooded with water and was home to an ancient river delta. That belief was found to be true when the rover found proof that water existed on the Red Planet.
Perseverance was launched on July 30, 2020, and reached Mars after a 203-day journey traversing 472 million kilometres.
“I've been on Mars for an Earth year, and I'm learning so much about this planet. Watch the live event on my landing anniversary and ask members of my team questions about our mission,” the Twitter-savvy rover posted on Thursday morning.
The six-wheeled robot collected its first sample, dubbed "Montdenier" on September 6 last year, and its second, "Montagnac" from the same rock on September 8.
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