NASA launches new Mars rover – News of Bahrain- DT News

NASA launches new Mars rover – News of Bahrain- DT News

Washington

NASA's next-generation Mars rover Perseverance blasted off from Florida's Cape Canav-

eral yesterday atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a $2.4 billion mission to search for traces of potential past life on Earth's planetary neighbour.

The next-generation robotic rover - a car-sized six-wheeled scientific vehicle - also is sched- uled to deploy a mini helicopter on Mars and test out equipment for future human missions to the fourth planet from the sun. It is expected to reach Mars next February.

It soared into the sky under clear, sunny and warm con- ditions carried by an Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing-Lock- heed joint venture United Launch Alliance. The launch took place after the Jet Propul- sion Laboratory in California where its mission engineers were located was rattled by an earthquake.

This marked NASA's ninth journey to the Martian surface. Perseverance is due to land at the base of an 820-foot-deep (250 meters) crater called Jeze- ro, a former lake from 3.5 billion years ago that scientists suspect could bear evidence of potential

past microbial life on Mars.

A close-up view of a full size model of the Perseverance rover is on display at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in