Mars rover "Estimat" broke the world record for driving in space

NASA's "Perseverance" rover set a new record in space exploration and passed the 14-year record of the Opportunity rover by traveling 45 km on the Red Planet. The post Istiqamat Mars rover broke the world record for driving in space appeared first on Safir Arjan.

According to Ambassador Arjan, the Space website reported in a report: NASA's Endurance rover reached a distance of 45.22 kilometers on Mars on October 11/19, breaking the record previously held by NASA's Opportunity rover, which traveled 45.16 kilometers. It took 14 years for Opportunity to travel this distance; But only 5.5 years have passed since the presence of Perseverance on Mars.

However, this new record is by no means the end of the Endurance rover's journey; Specialists in charge of this mission believe that this rover can eventually travel more than twice the distance traveled so far.

Endurance performance beyond expectations

Mark Maimone, one of the rover's drivers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said: "Our original design was only planned for a drive of about 20 kilometers, but so far we have traveled more than twice that, and the conditions seem to be very good to reach 100 kilometers in total."

He, who works as the main responsible for the automatic navigation of the planetary rover in the Endurance mission and also played a role in the development of the automatic driving systems of NASA's previous Mars rovers, added: "So we can travel twice as far as we have done so far." We expect that Endurance will be able to continue its mission to explore and collect very useful and valuable samples that will give us more information about the history of Mars.

The experts in charge of this mission emphasized that the endurance is really in good condition. Vivian Sun, associate science director for the project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "We are very fortunate that all of Endurance's primary capabilities, especially its science instruments, have remained more or less intact.

Endurance landed on the floor of Jezero Crater on Mars in February 2021; This 46-kilometer crater was created billions of years ago by the impact of an asteroid or comet, and scientists think it once hosted a lake. This makes it a promising place to look for signs of ancient life.

This robot was not the first explorer of the surface of Mars. The Endurance team drew on years of experience working with previous NASA rovers: Sojourner, which was the first robot on Mars in 1997, Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004, and Curiosity, which has been exploring since 2012.

NASA learned from the successes and mistakes of these earlier explorers how to better explore another planet with a rover controlled from millions of kilometers away. Endurance has made huge strides in many areas; From its special wheels to its self-driving system and internal gadgets.

This work would not have been possible without the previous missions we sent to Mars, Sun said. Five years after landing, we are definitely a well-coordinated and experienced group. There are many technical advances in endurance that are the result of many people and engineers working on this new technology for years and decades.

According to Sun and Monkey, this teamwork is the real secret of its perseverance and success. "The magic thing about our operations team is how cohesively we work together," Sun said. Engineers, rover drivers and the science team all work together, he added, taking each other's work into account when making decisions about everything from driving speed to science goals.

Endurance's work is by no means over on Mars. "We're planning to continue south on the crater rim," Sun said. There's a whole variety of different rocks along the crater rim to the south that we want to examine and understand how they represent conditions on early Mars.

Scientists hope that by continuing to explore Jezero, they will find a clue about the shape of the planet in the ancient past and the possibility of life on it. "There are huge chunks of pre-Jizero crust embedded in rock layers or thrown up by the impact and now sitting on the rim of the crater," Sun said. These are our opportunities to examine very old rocks that no longer exist on the surface in any other form.

In the next step, the endurance team goes to an area called Rainbow Falls. The area is thought to contain kaolinite (a clay mineral that forms when water interacts with rock), Sun said. Such minerals can be a sign of the presence of water in the past and are therefore important for the search for life.

Sun said: Whenever we look at clay minerals, questions arise about life and the search for possible signs of life; So when we get to Rainbow Falls, or even when we see kaolinite, it's very important.