Once upon a time on Mars A vehicle is about to start its way through the Martian dunes to satisfy a primordial longing of its human owners. _ Scienece & Technology ... English

 

Three and a half billion years ago, waves splashed and streams emerged on this dusty esplanade on Mars that is now known as Jezero Crater. It was a nascent Earth where chemistry coagulated into the exalted state we call life. EL TIMES: A weekly selection of stories in Spanish that you won't find anywhere else, with eñes and accents. Sign up Astronomers, philosophers and science fiction writers have all wondered if the nature of Mars carried out the same experiment as on Earth. Was it another test tube for Darwinian evolution? No one would make fun of you in biology class anymore for speculating if life actually evolved first on Mars and then drifted to Earth aboard a meteorite or if both planets were full of microbes or proto-life from somewhere. even further. That is why humans have sent their progeny through time and 300 million miles of space in search of very distant relatives, the ancestral roots of a family tree that could have originated in the soil of the Red Planet.

Rover Perseverance and his little brother, the Ingenuity helicopter landed in a cloud of sand on February 18, ruffled with antennas and cameras. Perseverance will spend the next Martian year - the equivalent of two Earth years - prowling, driving, and collecting rocks from the Jezero Crater and the delta of the river that penetrates it. The rover will scrutinize the remains chemically and geologically and take photographs so scientists on Earth can look for signs of ancient fossilization or other patterns that living organisms might have produced.

                    Perseverance discarded its heat shield above the surface 

                    of Mars- Credit -NASA / JPL-Caltech, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images?

              The rover being lowered to the surface by the descent stage .Credit-NASA / JPL-Caltech, via Reuters Image?

               The descent stage, upon completion of its mission, was seen hovering above the rover, in a snapshot of its                     camera before it flew away. Credit.

The Martian soil that the rover raised when it was placed on the planet by the descent stage. This image was captured by the rover's downward gaze camera during the final seconds of landing.

Perseverance and Ingenuity will operate with wide freedom: 12 minutes of light travel - and a signal delay - through the Pasadena aether, where their creators and caretakers wait to see what they have recently accomplished. Like teenagers you opened the door for to walk away with the car keys, Perseverance and Ingenuity are no smarter or more responsible than humans have taught them to be.

The rocks will be collected and returned to Earth in a five-year series of maneuvers involving relay rockets, rovers, and orbital transfers starting in 2026 that will make retrieving the moon rocks seem as easy as sending Christmas cookies to your family members. Rocks that come back from 2031 on will be scrutinized for years, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, in search of what they can tell about the hidden history of our lost twin and, perhaps, about the early days of life in the system. solar.

The generation that came after World War II made the first great survey of the solar system. The destiny of this generation could be the next great reconnaissance to discover if we have, or if we ever had, neighbors on these worlds. In the Jezero crater, the dream continues. We may never live on Mars, but our machines are already there.