Mars Update And More Anomalies

Mar
4thMars Update And More Anomalies

The Perseverance Rover

The Perseverance rover and its little sibling, the Ingenuity helicopter, landed in a cloud of dust on Feb. 18, bristling with antennas and cameras. Perseverance will spend the next Martian year — the equivalent of two Earth years — prowling, poking and collecting rocks from Jezero Crater and the river delta that enters it. The rover will scrutinize the debris chemically and geologically, and take photographs, so that scientists on Earth can search for any signs of ancient fossilization or other patterns that living organisms might have produced.

Those rocks will be picked up and returned to Earth in a five-year series of maneuvers involving relay rockets, rovers and orbital transfers starting in 2026 that will make the retrieval of the moon rocks look as easy as shipping holiday cookies to your relatives. The rocks that return starting in 2031 will be scrutinized for years, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, for what they might say about the hidden history of our lost twin and, perhaps, the earliest days of life in the Solar System.