The March 2020 Perseverance Rover, which began its approach to the Red Planet, will help answer the next logical question in Mars exploration.
With only about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) left to embark on his 471 million mile (471 million kilometers) journey, NASAMars 2020 Perseverance Rover approaches its new planet house. The spacecraft has begun to approach the Red Planet and in 43 days, on 18 February 2021, permeability through Mars’ atmosphere will flame at about 12,100 km / h (19,500 km / h) and gently on the surface about seven minutes later. .
“We are working on our final adjustments to put Perseverance in a perfect position to land on one of the most interesting places on Mars,” said Fernando Abilleira, deputy mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The team can not wait to put these wheels in a Mars dirt.”
In a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers observed the first driving test for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover on December 17, 2019. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Built and managed by JPL for NASA, Perseverance will join another robber and lander currently working on Mars, with several orbits in the air above. What distinguishes this six-wheeled robot?
1. Perseverance is looking for signs of ancient life.
While the surface of Mars is today a frozen desert, scientists from previous NASA missions have learned that the Red Planet ever offered running water and warmer environments to the surface that could support microbial life.
“We want Perseverance to help us answer the following logical question: Are there actually signs of earlier microbial life on Mars?” says Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist at JPL. “This demanding goal means sending the most sophisticated robot scientist to Mars to date.”
To address this question, which is key in the field of astrobiology, Perseverance carries a new range of leading scientific instruments. Two of these will play a particularly important role in the search for possible signs of past lives: SHERLOC (abbreviation for scanning habitable environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), which can detect organic matter and minerals, and PIXL (short for Planetary) Instrument for X-ray lithochemistry), which maps the chemical composition of rocks and sediments. The tools allow scientists to analyze these features at a higher level of detail than any Mars rover has ever achieved before.
This illustration shows NASA’s Mars 2020 spacecraft with the Perseverance Rover as it approaches Mars. Credit: NASA / JPL-Catech
Perseverance will also use tools to collect scientific data at a distance: Mastcam-Z’s cameras can zoom in on rock structures as far away as a soccer field, while SuperCam will use a laser to capture rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) to obscure. to study their composition in the resulting vapor. RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment) will use radar waves to investigate geological features underground.
2. The rover lands in a place with great potential to find these signs of microbial life.
Terrain that is of interest to scientists can be difficult to land on. Thanks to new technologies that enable perseverance to direct its landing site more accurately and avoid landing hazards autonomously, the spacecraft can become safe in a place as intriguing as the Jezero crater, a 28-kilometer (45-kilometer-wide) basin. with steep cliffs, sand dunes and boulders.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover completes its journey to Mars on February 18, 2021. To reach the surface of the Red Planet, it must survive the disturbing final phase known as Entrance, Descent, and Landing. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
More than 3.5 billion years ago, a river flowed there in a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe, which deposited deposits in a fan shape known as a delta. The Perseverance science team believes that these ancient river delta and multi-deposits could collect and preserve organic molecules and other possible signs of microbial life.
Persistence also collects important data about Mars’ geology and climate.
Context is everything. Mars orbits have collected images and data from the Jezero crater from about 322 kilometers above, but finding signs of ancient life on the surface requires much closer investigation. It requires a wanderer like perseverance.
This image shows the remains of an ancient delta in the Jezero crater of Mars, as seen by the high-resolution stereo camera aboard the Mars Express orbit ESA (European Space Agency). Credit: ESA / FU-Berlin
Understanding Mars’ climatic conditions in the past and reading the geological history embedded in its rocks will give scientists a richer sense of what the planet was like in its distant past. Studying the geology and climate of the Red Planet can also give us an idea of why Earth and Mars, despite some early similarities, were so different.
Perseverance is the first ride of a return to Mars.
The verification of ancient life on Mars carries an enormous burden of proof. Perseverance is the first rover to bring a monster box system to Mars to pack promising monsters for a future mission to Earth.
Instead of powdering rock like the drill on NASA’s Curiosity Rover does, Perseverance’s drill will cut intact rock cores that are about the size of a piece of chalk and place them in sample tubes that will store it until the rover drops a suitable drop. reach. from place on Mars. The rover could also possibly deliver the samples to a lander that is part of the planned Mars return campaign by NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency).
Once the monsters are here on earth, we can examine them with instruments that are too large and complicated to send to Mars, which can provide much more information about them than even the most sophisticated rover can get.
5. Perseverance carries tools and technology to pave the way for human missions to the Moon and Mars.
Terrain-relative navigation is among the future technologies on this mission that will benefit human exploration. As part of the spacecraft’s landing system, Terrain-relative navigation will enable the descending spacecraft to quickly and autonomously grasp its location across the Martian surface and change orbit.
Perseverance will also have more autonomy on the surface than any other rover, including self-driving smart ones that allow it to cover more ground during a day’s operations with fewer instructions from engineers on earth. This highway capability will make exploration of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies more efficient for other vehicles.
In addition, Perseverance is conducting a technology experiment called MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) that will produce oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide atmosphere. It will demonstrate a way for explorers to produce oxygen for rocket and breathing.
Two other tools will help engineers design systems for future human explorers to land and survive on Mars: the MEDLI2 (Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2) package is a next-generation version of what flew on Mars Science Laboratory mission that delivered the Curiosity Rover, while the MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) instrument suite provides information on weather, climate and surface ultraviolet radiation and dust.
Perseverance also gives a ride to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. A technological experiment, separate from the scientific mission of the Rover, will try Ingenuity’s first powered, controlled aircraft flight to another world. If the helicopter is successful in its 30-day (31-Earth-day) demonstration window, the data could help future explorations of the Red Planet – including those by astronauts – by adding a new air dimension.
6. The Perseverance Rover embodies the NASA – and the scientific – spirit to overcome challenges.
Bringing the spacecraft to the launch pad during a pandemic, searching for signs of ancient life, collecting monsters and proving new technology are no easy feat. A gentle touch with Mars is also not: only 50% of the Mars landing attempts by any space agency were successful.
The mission team draws inspiration from the name of its rover, with particular awareness of the challenges the entire world is currently experiencing. To that end, the mission has installed a special sign to honor the dedication and hard work of the medical community and first responders around the world. The team hopes to inspire the whole world and future explorers to create new paths and make discoveries on which the next generation can build.
7. You can ride together.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission carries more cameras than any interplanetary mission in history, with 19 cameras on the Rover itself and four on other parts of the spacecraft involved in entry, descent and landing. As with previous Mars missions, the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission plans to make raw and processed images available on the mission’s website.
Follow the Mars 2020 mission in real time as it travels to the Red Planet. Zoom in and give the spacecraft a spin, or view the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
If all goes well, the public can experience in high definition what it’s like to land on Mars – and hear the sounds of landing for the first time with a microphone mounted on the side of the rover. Another microphone on SuperCam will help scientists understand the properties of rocks examining the instrument and can also listen to the wind.
If you’re one of the 10.9 million people who signed up to send your name to Mars, your name will be stenciled on one of the three silicone chips embedded on a board on the rover that have the words “Explore as one “in the Morse code.