Nasa on Monday gave a technical green light to the launch of the six-wheel rover Perseverance to Mars, this Thursday, where the robot will search for traces of ancient microbes that may have populated the planet more than three billion ago. years. It will land on February 18, 2021.
“We are indeed ready for the launch,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a press conference, proud to have kept the schedule despite the Covid-19 pandemic. "We persevered, we protected this mission because it is very important". The launch will take place at 07:50 (11:50 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance.
Astrobiology mission
"I never thought that a launch director could work from home, but that's what I've been doing for the past five months," said Omar Baetz, head of launch at the agency, amused. American space. The previous rovers of the United States have shown that the red planet had been "habitable", that is to say that the conditions which one thinks favorable to the appearance of life (carbon, water, favorable climate) were present.
But we still do not know if it has been inhabited, and this mission, decided in 2012 and called “March 2020”, will attempt to answer the question. "This is the first time in history that NASA has devoted a mission to what is called astrobiology: the search for life, perhaps current, or old life in another world", Jim Bridenstine said.
China launches for March in 2021
Perseverance, an improved version of the Curiosity robot which has been rolling on Mars since 2012, will carry out analyzes of Martian rocks using its on-board instruments designed in particular by researchers in France and Spain, but above all it will take rock samples, which it will will leave on the surface in sealed tubes to be recovered by a future mission, and brought back to Earth in 2031.
Only the Americans have so far managed to land intact robots on Mars: four landers (fixed), and four rovers (Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, the only one still alive). But China will attempt its first landing on Mars next year: its Tianwen-1 mission was launched last week, with the landing of a four-wheeled robot scheduled for May 2021.
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