IN OUR VIEW | Touch Down: Mars rover an epic achievement

NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you were like most in the Twin Cities, stuck at home waiting out the snowstorm, you had the chance to see something incredible.

After a nearly 300-million-mile journey that took more than six months, NASA's Perseverance rover landed safely on the planet Mars. The touchdown was covered by several TV networks.

It's two-year mission is to search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet as well as transmit information about the geology of the surface. It will collect any samples of microfossils it can find at the site of a lake that existed 3.9 billion years ago.

The rover will record, for the first time, sounds on the planet's surface. It will also fly a helicopter drone, the first time something like that has happened on another planet.

And the rover will also experiment with converting carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere to oxygen - something that could further the hope of manned exploration.

Perseverance is an epic achievement. Something NASA and the entire U.S. can be proud of. It shows just what we are still capable of when we work toward a common goal.

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