BUFFALO, N.Y. — After spending seven months traveling across the solar system from Earth, NASA's Perseverance Rover will land on Mars Thursday afternoon. And though it's the end of the rover's journey across space, it's just the beginning of it's adventure into new discoveries on the red planet.
The Perseverance Rover is NASA's fifth rover to be sent to Mars, following the most recent Curiosity rover which landed on the planet in 2012. Perseverance is approximately the size of an SUV and weighs two tons.
Earlier Thursday, Storm Team 2 Meteorologist Elyse Smith spoke with Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program and Mars Sample Return. He's an astro-biologist and has worked for NASA for over 20 years and cannot wait for this rover to explore a brand new place on Mars: The Jezero Crater!
Meyer explained the special purpose of this rover is to explore and find ancient signs of life within the Jezero Crater. And eventually, the samples Perseverance collects will journey back to Earth in future missions.
He also noted that this is part of the long range plan to bring humans to Mars. Meyer explained one of the new instruments specifically designed with that in mind, "One of the things that Perseverance is doing it has an instrument on board called MOXI. What it’s going to do is split the atmosphere of Mars, CO-2, and make pure oxygen. So that oxygen is something that astronauts would like to breath but oxygen is also great for jet fuel so they could make one component of jet fuel on Mars."
Also on board Perseverance, a CD full of names collected by NASA to travel to the planet. Most notably to Buffalo, Ezra Castro, also known as Pancho Billa.