ISLAMABAD-Following touchdown, MOXIE will brew up oxygen while geologists comb for sediments to sample. Recently, NASA\u2019s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, is scheduled to touch down on the surface of the red planet following a nail-biting entry and descent sequence vividly known as the \u201cseven minutes of terror.\u201d If all goes according to plan, the car-sized explorer\u00a0will\u00a0blast safely down into Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide impact basin that once may have hosted a river delta flooded with water, and possibly life. Over the next year and a half of its primary mission, Perseverance will explore the crater and collect rock samples that will one day be returned to Earth, where scientists hope to study them for evidence of ancient microbial life. As the rover traverses the empty lake bed, it will determine which sediments to sample, with the help of MIT\u2019s Tanja Bosak, professor of geobiology, and Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences. Bosak and Weiss are members of the mission\u2019s return sample science team and will be using the rover\u2019s images to direct the vehicle toward interesting sediments to collect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD-Following touchdown, MOXIE will brew up oxygen while geologists comb for sediments to sample. Recently, NASA\u2019s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, is scheduled to touch down on the surface of the red planet following a nail-biting entry and descent sequence vividly known as the \u201cseven minutes […]<\/p>\n
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