Since arriving at Jezero Crater in February 2021, NASA’s newest and most advanced Mars rover has been trekking the surface of another world. Its prime mission or how long it was expected to last was supposed to last for two Earth years, but seeing that it has survived for the past two years, NASA will extend its mission for another two years until 2026. If the rover continues to operate until that deadline, NASA will extend its mission until 2028 and so on.
Mission Accomplishments
Ever since landing on February 18, 2021, Perseverance had a set of goals to complete, one of which was to collect samples that will be returned to Earth in the 2030s.
The mission has been a smashing success one of the first, biggest accomplishments was when Ingenuity, a small drone made to operate on Mars took off in April of 2021. Ingenuity is still operational and has flown over 40 times since.
Perseverance has also completed many accomplishments on its own. In the fall of 2021, the rover collected its first sample. After successfully collecting 15 samples, the rover picked a place to safely store the samples on the ground. The rover then carefully placed the samples down in its tracks to give them production from the wind blowing them away. Another accomplishment is that one of the instruments on the rover was the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, nicknamed MOXIE. NASA engineers created MOXIE in the hope to demonstrate that they could use the carbon dioxide on Mars to create oxygen. In the spring of 2021, MOXIE successfully created enough oxygen for a human to survive for 6 minutes, and NASA hopes that when they put humans on Mars that they can use this technology.
And lastly, Perseverance is the fastest Mars rover ever! With top speeds of 8 centimeters per second. Even though it takes the rover half an hour to travel the distance of a football field on Mars, it's still cruising! Overall the rover has traveled 10 miles on the surface. For comparison, it took NASA’s longest-running rover Opportunity a decade to reach that distance!
Perseverance has been so successful and with its prime mission complete, who knows what could be in store!