With a rover named by a middle school kid in Virginia (and a helicopter named by a young woman STEM student, a high schooler -- in Alabama!), this mission is the most complex our nation has ever attempted -- in heading to Mars. This rover is much larger and heavier, and will -- it is hoped -- launch a 'copter, as well, to fly over the Barsoomian landscape in a search for past evidence of. . . organics. That's daring truly. . . mighty things, indeed.
Top it all off with the idea that we intend to land it inside an old impact crater from a meteor, to get right on top of. . . four billion year old crust level rocks. [When Curiosity was on the launchpad, we declined this landing site, as we didn't have enough obstacle avoidance software / confidence, to choose it. Now two decades later -- we are affirmatively choosing to trust the software and hardware in a tight landing footprint.]
. . . .NASA is expected to launch its new Mars rover, Perseverance, on Thursday, July 30. The car-size Perseverance, NASA’s fifth Mars rover, is the heaviest and largest the space agency has ever sent to the red planet.
Perseverance is set to lift off at 7:50 a.m. on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.
It is expected to land on Mars in February 2021. Its main job is to seek signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth. . . .
We will have a live link to NASA-TV, here come about 6 AM EDT, on Thursday. Stay positive; stay hopeful. . . be unafraid. Let us move. . . forward.
नमस्ते
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