NASA’s Perseverance rover performs first drive on Mars

Washington, March 6 : NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars on Thursday, covering 6.5 meters across the Martian landscape, said NASA on Friday.
The drive, which lasted about 33 minutes, propelled the rover forward four meters, where it then turned in place 150 degrees to the left and backed up 2.5 meters into its new temporary parking space, Xinhua news agency reported.
The drive served as a mobility test as team members check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance, according to NASA.
Once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, it is expected to have regular commutes extending 200 meters, said NASA.
“The first trek of the agency’s largest, most advanced rover yet on the Red Planet marks a major milestone before science operations get under way,” said NASA in a statement.
“When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” said Anais Zarifian, Perseverance rover mobility test bed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.