What images arrived from Mars and were dazzled by scientists and engineers in “N.

12:10 PM

Saturday 20 February 2021

–

Agencies:

As soon as I touched the surface of Mars last Thursday, the “Perseverance” spacecraft, weighing 1050 kilograms, and costing two billion and 700 million dollars, broadcast the first image of an area of ​​the “Jezero” crater, where it landed to study its geological condition, and for 687 days to search for any traces of life that blossomed in its environment in Distant past of the planet.

3 billion and 500 million years ago, “Jizero” was like a lake with a diameter of 49 kilometers, rich with water flowing to it from two channels that appear in the pictures published by the “Al-Arabiya” news channel, as well as a delta from a river that split into two branches.

Then the spacecraft continued to take pictures of the surrounding area and send them to the NASA control team on the ground.

Among the most striking of these images is a picture taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched by NASA, which has been circling Mars since 2006. The vehicle appeared in it after it entered its airspace and a speed-reducing parachute drove it to its pre-prepared landing site, and was led by a radar installed in it.

And the second excitement, according to Al-Arabiya, is in which the vehicle appears to have landed on the planet’s skin, after it separated from what they call a “heat shield” designed to protect it from high temperatures caused by friction with the planet’s airspace upon its entry into it, and then a 21-meter-diameter parachute took care of it. When it reached a circle of 31 square meters from the crater, prepared in advance for its landing in it, it separated from it and handed it over to another landing mechanism.

The other landing mechanism is a “celestial platform” known in English as the skycrane, which descended from the reverse jet, hanging from it with ropes and special wires, according to the NASA website.

The site indicated that this image was taken by a camera installed in the “celestial platform” and transmitted to the spacecraft when it seized the Martian nodule. In turn, the spacecraft sent it to Earth, and then the “platform” separated from it, to be destroyed elsewhere.

As for the third image, it was taken by a camera in the vehicle of one of the 6 wheels, which will begin next week to roam through the promising crater, while the fourth image is for graphics from NASA on the new navigation technology related to the terrain “to avoid risks and find a safe place to land in the Jezero crater on Mars.” .

As the picture shows, the published graphic with the image of the wheel shows safe blue areas in the crater for landing, and red areas that are not valid, because they are rugged and thorny with pits and rocks that may interrupt the “Perseverance” wandering on Mars, which they reached after traveling 471 million kilometers in a journey that took 203 days. , At a speed of 96 thousand kilometers per hour.

In the graphic image, we find that the landing area is colored green, according to what was distinguished by a report from the “Jet Propulsion Laboratory”, the most sophisticated and sophisticated of the most sophisticated and complex of the missions carried by “NASA” of Mars missions so far, considering that “Perseverance” is equipped with a technological cocktail enhanced intelligently Synthetic was not the luck of any other spacecraft.

The summary of the mission, which includes the flight of a small helicopter in the atmosphere of Mars, which the vehicle carried with it for this purpose, is to search for life that may still remain a trace of it in the Red Planet, if it had a previous or present presence in it, even if it was of a primitive microbial type.

This is in addition to studying the planet’s geology and climate, and then collecting samples of rocks, soil and stones, to be transported by a joint mission between “NASA” and the European Space Agency, in the year 2031 from Mars to Earth, to analyze and study them in the depth they deserve.

Despite the lack of pictures, scientists and engineers at NASA were dazzled by them, including Steve Collins, an expert in steering control at the Puerperium Laboratory in California.

On Friday, Collins said that these pictures “leave minds dazed and dazzled,” adding that the US space agency “has gotten some really cool things,” according to Al Arabiya.

– .