---本文---

1. The American space agency has released an astonishing image sent back from Mars by its Perseverance rover.

2. It shows the robot heading down to the ground on Thursday to make its landing. Perseverance has a large amount of data in its memory banks which it is gradually offloading to Earth.

3. Among other pictures is a view from a satellite that captures the rover in the parachute phase of its descent.This also represents an immense technical achievement because the satellite - the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - was approximately 700km from Perseverance at the time and traveling at about 3km/s.

4. Nasa is promising more in the next few days. This offering will include short movies shot during the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) sequence - with sound.

5. Perseverance has been put in a near-equatorial Martian crater known as Jezero where it will search for signs of past microbial life.

6. Engineers report Perseverance to be in good health, as they gradually commission its systems. All the hardware needs to be assessed to be sure nothing was damaged during Thursday's plunge through the Martian atmosphere to the ground.

7. The science team was itching to start exploring the crater, said deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan.

Even now, with just this limited first release of pictures, there were fascinating rocks to discuss, she told reporters.

8. Its initial mission will last one Martian year (roughly two Earth years), although it's hard to see the agency not extending this if all the hardware remains healthy.

9. As well as searching for signs of life, Perseverance's other key objective is to select and package rock samples that can be brought back to Earth laboratories by later missions.

------------

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56133281

#英語 #NASA #火星