A year ago, after seven months of travel and seven minutes of descent, the Perseverance robot landed on the red planet.

Since then, this little jewel of technology has kept all its promises and successfully fulfilled its first year spent tracking down traces of past life.

Placed on the site of an ancient lake, the Jezero crater, it first honed its seven instruments.

Before succeeding in recording for the first time Martian sounds, in particular the wind, and transmitting them to Earthlings.

“It was one of the great discoveries of the year.

No one had ever heard of Mars!

», recalls Sylvestre Maurice, co-responsible scientist of SuperCam and astrophysicist at the Irap of the University of Toulouse (CNRS/CNES).

Sound, flight and minerals

A bit like the explorers Vasgo de Gama and Magellan, those responsible for this mission "discover a new world", says the astrophysicist.

On a daily basis, he and his team go through the robot's latest deliveries.

"In twelve months, we collected a harvest of data on mineralogy, atmosphere, weather, and tens of thousands of images," he explains.

Between the laser shots from Perseverance and those from Curiosity, the symbolic milestone of the millionth shot on Mars has just been passed.

A technology that reads the chemical composition of rocks.

Alternately, they are made from the United States or the CNES space center in Toulouse.

At present, Perseverance has covered four kilometers, including 500 meters last weekend alone.

By the end of its mission, the rover must take about forty samples.

They will then be recovered during another mission which will bring them back to Earth, by the 2030s. Perseverance has already recovered seven of them, including one empty.

“It's a slow learning curve, but given all the constraints, I'm the happiest of scientists.

You have to be patient, Perseverance is like a turtle, very intelligent, ”says Jim Bell, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

Like the other scientists on board this mission, he remembers the historic flight of the Ingenuity helicopter, the rover's scout.

And especially when, last fall, Perseverance proved that the landing site had been well chosen.

“We only had images in orbit suggesting a lake site.

But when we saw, on images on the ground, that we were indeed on an old lake, fed by a delta river, like the Mississippi or the Mekong… It completely turned us around”.

The rover will now head for the delta.

It is only two kilometers away, but he will have to go around a dune to reach it, by spring.

In an area where mineral elements have accumulated, more favorable to the development of a form of life of the microbial type.

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The Perseverance rover confirms that there was a huge lake on Mars

  • CNES

  • Astronomy

  • Space

  • Perseverance

  • March

  • Science

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