The Whole World Celebrates NASA Rover’s Touchdown on Mars

After 203 days and 293 million miles (472 million kilometres), the NASA rover touched down on Mars today, Thursday, 18th February 2021. The internet has been abuzz since the announcement. As the possibility of life on Mars draws closer, excitement has steadily increased. The successful landing of Perseverance on Mars is a giant step in the direction of accomplishing that goal.

According to Space.com, there have been previous trips that were both successful and unsuccessful to Mars since the 1970s. Some of the more recent ones are:

Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity

The U.S. launched it on November 26th, 2011. The US$ 2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed at Gale Crater on the night of August 5th, 2012, and has spent the last several years investigating Mount Sharp/Aeolis Mons to learn about the history of water across Martian geologic periods. The Mars rover is investigating whether the planet was ever hospitable to life, and has found ample evidence of organic molecules and water in the past decade. Its primary mission has been extended several times.

Schiaparelli (UNSUCCESSFUL)

European Space Agency, launched on March 14, 2016, had an unsuccessful landing attempt on October 19, 2016. Schiaparelli was a landing demonstrator meant to test future landing technologies for Martian missions. It arrived safely at the Red Planet with the Trace Gas Orbiter, but conflicting data caused the little probe to crash into the surface. Fortunately, TGO safely remained in orbit as planned and continues to collect data.

InSight

The U.S. launched InSight on May 5th, 2018, and landed on Nov. 26th, 2018. InSight is equipped to probe the interior of Mars and has found ample evidence of marsquakes. One of its larger goals is to better understand the history and formation of rocky planets more generally, using Mars as a testbed for our theories. Engineers spent two Earth years attempting to put a heat-seeking mole under the surface, but the effort ultimately was called off because the regolith (soil) was harder than expected. InSight is now on an extended mission, having met its primary mission goals.

So why is Perseverance important? Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA said, “Because of today’s exciting events, the first pristine samples from carefully documented locations on another planet are another step closer to being returned to Earth.”

About the size of a car, the 2,263-pound (1,026-kilogram) robotic geologist and astrobiologist will undergo several weeks of testing before it begins its two-year science investigation of Mars’ Jezero Crater. While the rover will investigate the rock and sediment of Jezero’s ancient lakebed and river delta to characterize the region’s geology and past climate, a fundamental part of its mission is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. To that end, the Mars Sample Return campaign, being planned by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), will allow scientists on Earth to study samples collected by Perseverance to search for definitive signs of past life using instruments too large and complex to send to the Red Planet.

Source: NASA science

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, a Nigerian professor of Physics and Astronomy at George Mason’s University, said, “Every mission has the same theme, hope, and possibility and for this one, the stakes are high because this may be the beginning of the mission that finds life on another world.”

The first photo that Perseverance took after landing:

Here’s the video of NASA agents celebrating the big win for the planet!

And now Twitter’s very important question:

You’re going to Mars,

Who’s your +1?