NASA’s Perseverance rover has been on a Mars exploratory mission for the final two years. Since its touchdown in February 2021, the Martian rover has not solely captured breathtaking snapshots of the barren planet, however has additionally found the beautiful constructions and formations on the crimson planet. The Perseverance Rover has been accumulating rock samples, analyzing the terrain, and trying to find proof of earlier microbial life on Mars. Now, the rover has made one other beautiful discovery by capturing drifting clouds within the Martian sky.
The picture was released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory yesterday and it was captured by one of many navigation cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. The beautiful clouds have been captured simply earlier than dawn on March 18, 2023, the 738th Martian day of the Mars mission. The Martian clouds are manufactured from dry ice condensed on reddish mud particles suspended within the environment, in keeping with NASA.
To check these carbon dioxide-based clouds, NASA launched its citizen science mission referred to as Cloudspotting on Mars. By understanding the formation and the looks of those clouds, scientists hope to higher perceive the construction of Mars’ environment.
NASA Pattern Return Program
NASA’s Mars Pattern Return is a sequence of missions to retrieve scientific samples of Mars collected by the Perseverance rover. Probably the most bold house missions ever deliberate, the Mars Pattern Return mission would enable scientists to check these samples utilizing state-of-the-art know-how right here on Earth. A lot of the samples can be rock; nonetheless, researchers additionally wish to study regolith – damaged rock and dirt – not solely due to what it will possibly educate us about geological processes and the atmosphere on Mars.
A Pattern Retrieval Lander would launch to Mars in 2028, carrying with it a NASA-led Mars rocket and a pair of small Mars helicopters which might land near Perseverance’s touchdown location within the Jezero Crater. The journey from Mars to Earth is lengthy sufficient as it’s and NASA is doing every thing attainable to ensure that the scientific samples from Mars attain Earth safely.
