Unfortunately, China's Zhurong rover still failed to wake up, it is now October, the last hope is dashed, at present, the only rover that can move on Mars is the American Perseverance and Curiosity, I have to say, the American Perseverance and Curiosity are really bullish.
Curiosity traveled inside the 154-kilometer-diameter Gale Crater and struggled to climb Mount Sharp, which is more than 5,000 meters high, and in September this year, Curiosity climbed a cliff and looked around, taking a series of photos to form a 360-degree panorama.
Next, Curiosity will continue to climb Mount Sharp until it reaches the highest point of Mount Sharp, but the next road will be more bumpy and the wheel of Curiosity will undergo greater tests.
However, the rover that everyone pays the most attention to is Perseverance, because the Perseverance rover is more advanced than Curiosity, and if life really exists on Mars, then the Jezero crater that Perseverance is exploring is easier to find life.
As early as hundreds of millions of years ago, Jezeroo Crater was a circular lake with a diameter of more than 45 kilometers, and multiple rivers supplied water to the lake for tens of millions of years, and the sediment brought by the rivers accumulated into a delta area, and now the Perseverance rover climbs up the delta area to explore.
Perseverance is the fastest rover ever traveled, covering more than 800 meters in a day, much faster than the Curiosity rover and China's Zhurong, which has traveled a total of 21 kilometers in the past two and a half years.
After traveling such a long distance, Perseverance found a lot, and on August 30, 2023, on the 899th Martian Day, the Perseverance rover photographed the wonder, and a tornado was moving west on the western edge of Jezeroo Crater.
Using the data in the images, NASA scientists determined the size, location and direction of movement of the tornado, which is about 60 meters wide in the middle, 118 meters wide at the bottom, about 2 kilometers high, and about 4 kilometers from the rover, moving from east to west at a speed of 19 kilometers per hour.
NASA scientists generated 21 consecutive photos into a 4-second moving image, which is 20 times faster than the original video, showing the details of the tornado's changes and movements.
The appearance of tornadoes on Mars proves that Mars does have an atmosphere and has more active atmospheric activity, but the density of the atmosphere is only 1% of the density of the Earth's atmosphere, and there will be no rainfall activity.
Everyone knows that there are tornadoes on Earth, which form when rising warm air mixes with falling columns of cold air, in spring and summer, tornadoes are more rampant, so are Martian tornadoes, and the northern hemisphere of Mars is in summer, so there will be tornadoes.
Perseverance's biggest mission is to search for life on Mars, and now the delta region where Perseverance is located is the most likely place for life on Mars, and over the next year, Perseverance will work hard to explore the delta region, sampling if necessary.
Years ago, NASA scientists said our Perseverance would find life on Mars. Indeed, ancient Mars has a thick atmosphere, an ocean of liquid water, suitable temperatures, and such favorable conditions, which is indeed likely to give birth to life.
The Perseverance rover uses nuclear batteries and does not use solar panels, so even if Mars blows up a sandstorm, it is not afraid, which is the most powerful part of the Perseverance rover.
Nuclear batteries, also known as radioisotope batteries, are encapsulated with the radioactive element plutonium 238, with a half-life of 86.4 years, so there is no problem with using 50 years, Voyager 1 uses nuclear batteries, more than 40 years later, nuclear batteries can still provide electricity. For interesting and informative scientific content, please pay attention to the only WeChat public account: Interesting Exploration