NASA to launch Perseverance rover with Ingenuity helicopter for Mars mission on July 30

World's premier space agency NASA is all set to send a life-hunter to Mars on July 30. NASA's Perseverance rover will search for  signs of life past or present on the Red Planet.

According to NASA, Perseverance will land on Mars in February 2021 and the rover will use several high-end instruments including 23 cameras to examine the climate and geology of the Red Planet.

“Perseverance will bring all human senses to Mars. It will sense the air around it, see and scan the horizon, hear the planet with microphones on the surface for the first time, feel it as it picks up samples to cache, perhaps even taste, it in a sense, as it performs chemical analyses of the dust," said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen during a press conference on July 20.

After landing on the surface of Mars, Perseverance will release a small helicopter called Ingenuity from its underside. “We as human beings have never flown a rotorcraft, a helicopter, anywhere outside of Earth’s atmosphere, so it’s really a Wright Brothers moment on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity’s lead engineer, during the press conference.

Aung added that Ingenuity will remain in air only total of 15 minutes at most, but such helicopters could be used in the future to carry out research in inaccessible areas. Aung noted that helicopters like Ingenuinty can also serve as scouts for rovers and astronauts.

Perseverance will will also carry an instrument which will be used to extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide in thin atmosphere of Mars. “Perseverance is also the bridge between science and human exploration that demonstrates how the two can support and reinforce each other,” said Zurbuchen.