Year 6 Watches Perseverance Landing

On Friday 18 February 2021, over 30 students from Year 6 came to school super early to watch as NASA attempted to land its newest rover “Perseverence” on the Martian surface. The excitement had been building up over several weeks but the day had finally arrived! The aim of this mission is to collect samples from an ancient lake bed on the red planet in the hope of discovering whether Mars ever had life and if humans could potentially survive there one day. As the rover entered the Martian atmosphere, we all held our breath until it safely touched down.

The distance from Mars to Earth is about 210 million kilometres. Every 26 months, Earth and Mars are closest to each other which is the best time for space agencies to launch their rockets to Mars. The next mission to Mars will be to retrieve samples collected from this mission in 2026. We have added our names to this mission which means that in some small way, we all get to go to Mars one day.

– Ophelia and Alice (Year 6) and Clayton Howard – Year 6 teacher