The six-wheeled roving explorer has inspected a stretch of the Red Planet to see if it is flat enough for NASA’s next Mars lander. While NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is conducting its science campaign, taking samples at Jezero Crater’s ancient river delta, it’s also been busy scouting. The rove
Perseverance has filled with rock and sediment. The sites being surveyed are under consideration because of their proximity to the delta and to one another, as well as for their reasonably flat, lander-friendly topography.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used one of its navigation cameras to take this panorama of a proposed landing site for the Mars Sample Return lander that would serve as part of the campaign to bring samples of Mars rock and sediment to Earth for intensive study. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltechprefer to work with flatter ground. With that in mind, the MSR Entry, Descent, and Landing team is looking for a pancake-flat landing zone with a 200-foot radius.
This illustration shows a concept for a proposed NASA Mars lander-and-rocket combination that would play a key role in returning to Earth samples of Mars material collected by the Perseverance rover. This Sample Retrieval Lander would carry a small rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle to the Martian surface.
This illustration shows NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle in powered flight. The MAV will carry tubes containing Martian rock and soil samples into orbit around Mars, where ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter spacecraft will enclose them in a highly secure containment capsule and deliver them to Earth. Credit: NASAThe MSR team calls the area they’ve been looking at the “landing strip” because – at least from images taken from spacecraft in orbit – it appears to be as flat and long as a runway.
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