NewsTracker Answers for week of Feb. 22, 2021

Q: When NASA landed its rover Perseverance on Mars last week, the tiny village of Jezero in Bosnia and Herzegovina was particularly excited. The craft landed on an ancient lake bed named Jezero, which means lake in most Slavic languages. Where is the Balkan nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Circle the area on this map


Q: The village of Jezero has about 1,000 residents in western Bosnia and Herzegovina. Along with neighboring and nearby countries of Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia, Bosnia was part of which former nation?

A. Czechoslovakia

B. Soviet Union

C. Wallachia

D. Yugoslavia


D. After the communist nation of Yugoslavia broke apart in the early 1990s, the region was torn by a series of ethnic and sectarian wars and the creation of seven independent nations.


Q: Seven months ago, Jezero’s schoolchildren watched the launch of the Mars rover from Earth and last week watched the landing. What is the rover mainly searching for at the location of Mars’ Jezero?

A. Colony site

B. Extinct life

C. Underground water

D. Valuable minerals


B. The mission is NASA’s most ambitious effort in decades to directly study whether there was ever life on the now barren red planet. The car-size rover will use cameras, radar and lasers to look for signs of fossilized microbial life. It also will drill core samples to be picked up by a future spacecraft and returned to Earth for analysis.


Q: The NASA spacecraft was the third to arrive at Mars this month. Two other nations placed spacecraft in orbit around the red planet. Which one also plans to land its own rover on Mars?

A. China

B. India

C. Russia

D. United Arab Emirates


A. China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft entered Mars orbit on Feb. 10, one day after a United Arab Emirates craft began its orbit to study the planet. Tianwen-1 is expected this year to try putting a lander and rover on Mars to study the distribution of ice, which future human colonists on Mars could use to sustain themselves.


Q: Nations have been trying to use spacecraft to study Mars since 1960, but many missions ended in failure. A U.S. spacecraft in 1964 was the first to fly by Mars. Which nation was the first to orbit Mars?

A. China

B. Japan

C. Soviet Union

D. United States


A. The now-disbanded Soviet Union put its Mars 2 spacecraft into orbit around the planet in 1971. But, the spacecraft’s attempt to put a lander and rover on the surface ended in a crash and the first impact on Mars by a man-made object. So far, the United States is the only nation to successfully land and operate a rover on the surface of Mars.