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Context:

• NASA Mars Perseverance Rover Triumphantly Completes First Sample Depot on Another World.

About:

• Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the crater Jezero on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission.
• Perseverance has been active on Mars for 130 sols (133 Earth days) since its landing.
• Following the rover's arrival, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing.
• Perseverance has a similar design to its predecessor rover, Curiosity, from which it was moderately upgraded.
• It carries seven primary payload instruments, nineteen cameras, and two microphones.
• The rover also carried the mini-helicopter Ingenuity to Mars, an experimental aircraft and technology showcase that made the first powered flight on another planet on 19 April 2021.

Broad Objectives of Mars 2020 Mission:

• Looking for habitability: Identify past environments that were capable of supporting microbial life.
• Seeking bio-signatures: Seek signs of possible past microbial life in those habitable environments, particularly in specific rock types known to preserve signs over time.
• Caching samples: Collect core rock and regolith ("soil") samples and store them on the Martian surface.
• Preparing for humans: Test oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere.

Read: iasgyan.in/daily-current-affairs/nasas-perseverance-missio

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/nasa-perseverance-mars-rover-sample-return-8415289/

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