Perseverance mission

Why in news?

• NASA's Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars as part of NASA Mars 2020 mission.

About Mars 2020 mission:

• Mars 2020 is a Mars rover built by NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone.
• Mars 2020 was launched from Earth on an Atlas V launch vehicle on 30 July 2020.
• The launch of Mars 2020 was the third of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of the United Arab Emirates (the Hope orbiter on 19 July) and China (Tianwen-1 on 23 July, with an orbiter, lander, and rover).

About Perseverance mission:

• Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission.
• Perseverance carries seven new scientific instruments and has a total of 19 cameras and two microphones.
• Perseverance will investigate an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials.
• It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission.
• The rover is carrying the mini-helicopter Ingenuity, an experimental aircraft that will attempt the first powered flight on another planet.

PRELIMS QUESTION

Consider the following pairs of space missions and countries who launched them:
1.Hope mission – UAE
2.Perseverance Mission - USA
3.Tianwen -  Japan
Which of the pairs given above is/are correct?
(a)1 and 2 only
(b)2 and 3 only
(c)1 and 3 only
(d)1,2 and 3 

Answer to Prelims Question