Watch NASA 'test the absolute heck out of' its Mars Perseverance rover
Mars won't seem so bad after what Perseverance had to go through on Earth.
Mars isn't a friendly place for machines. It's eaten many of our robots alive. But NASA's Perseverance rover is up to the challenge after surviving a battery of brutal tests right here at home.
"Mars is hard, and everybody knows that," project manager John McNamee said in a NASA release on Monday. "What they may not realize is that to be successful at Mars, you have to test the absolute heck out of the thing here on Earth."
NASA shared a summary of the rover's trials with a video of its greatest hits, which included spin, shake, solar, thermal and driving tests. Spoiler alert: it passed them all.
Perseverance is on schedule to launch to Mars as early as July. It will reach the red planet in February 2021 where it will seek out signs of ancient life and study Martian rocks and soil. It will even release a helicopter, a technology demonstration that could change the way we explore other worlds.
It's been a tough road so far. The rover has been blasted with sound waves, bathed in intense light, chilled in frigid temperatures, subjected to the thin atmospheric conditions and put through its paces on uneven surfaces. Mars might feel like a vacation after all of that.
