With missions from three countries expected to reach the Red Planet this month, 2021 could be the most striking year in the history of Mars research.
Earthlings have been sending probes and robots to and near Mars since the 1960s, and dozens have successfully captured images and data about the planet, gradually revealing its desert mysteries. We learned a little about its geology and atmosphere, found ice, and proved evidence that Mars used to be home to blue oceans.
Now we look deeper. The looming missions will seek evidence of past life on Mars, collect a complete picture of the planet’s weather systems, prepare soil samples to pick up through a future mission and even the first flight on Mars (via a small helicopter) approach.
From the United States comes Perseverance, NASA’s fifth Mars rover. In the country’s first independent mission to Mars, China sends Tianwen-1. And the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Orbit will be the first interplanetary mission of any Arab nation.
All three of these missions were launched from Earth in July 2020. Hopefully, by the end of 2021, they will teach us many new things about Mars.
The perseverance mission
NASA’s perseverance is expected to land in Jezero crater, just north of the Martian equator.
‘We’re going to a very old area of Mars and we expect the climate to be warmer and wetter about 3.5 million years ago, that’s the age of these rocks we’re looking at, if life were to have a chance to. come. “This could be a good place to look for evidence,” said Mitch Schulte, a Mars 2020 program scientist at NASA.
Once the rover lands, he will make sure his parts and scientific instruments are working, which can take a month or two. But once it is ready, the search for the past life can begin.
Perseverance is equipped with cameras, lasers and other instruments to investigate Mars and search for traces of atoms left behind by small life forms.
Debts were at the forefront of the process that determined which instruments would be included with the Rover. The process took place in 2014, two years after the team began developing this mission.
“Instruments on the rover’s arm will be able to detect the presence of organic material, but we do not expect dinosaur bones or anything like that,” Schulte said. “We are really looking at fine details in the environment in which the organisms inhabited.”
Those instruments on the rover’s arm are called and. SHERLOC can hit surfaces two centimeters further with an ultraviolet laser to detect organic chemicals, and is equipped with a camera called WATSON.
PIXL uses an X-ray to search for organic material, the traces of which can last millions of years after a microscopic organism has lived.
Before the hunt begins, the rover will try to start the first flight on Mars. On board perseverance is ingenuity, a drone of about 4 pounds equipped with a camera. It can fly for about 90 seconds and cover nearly 1,000 feet at altitudes of 10 to 15 feet on preset roads. It is powered by solar power and can recharge its own battery.
‘This will be the first time something has flown on another planet. It’s pretty spectacular, ”says Michael Meyer, chief scientist of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA. As chief scientist, Meyer is working with the global community of Mars scientists to determine what the next steps of Mars exploration should be and how missions should proceed in the future.
“This will be the first time something has flown on another planet. It’s pretty spectacular.”
If the test flight goes well, it could open a path for other drones in space exploration, which could survey planets between the distant scale of orbits and a scale six feet high.
“It improves your possibilities of where to take samples,” Meyer said. ‘The outcome you do not see from the rover or do not see from space can be the perfect place to take a sample. As you think more about this and learn more about how to fly on Mars, you can think about putting other things to it that can pick up monsters, do things for you that are too dangerous or steep for a robber. ”
An artist’s representation of what the first flight on Mars with the Ingenuity helicopter will look like.
Mars has a lot of carbon dioxide but little oxygen. Persistence will therefore use an instrument called MOXIE to ‘extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, compress it and then use a solid oxide cell to strip the oxygen’, Schulte said.
If the test is successful, MOXIE can be used to provide future astronauts with breathable air. Oxygen is also an important component of rocket fuel. If spacecraft could launch from Earth with less fuel for the return voyage, they would be able to transport more cargo with the same amount of fuel or alternatively need less fuel thanks to the lighter cargo.
Eventually, a mission will be sent to pick up 43 sample tubes that Perseverance has filled and stored in itself until it is ready to be left outside.
Scientists on earth will have to determine where the samples should be collected, and where and when they should be deposited. There is a debate over the timing of this. If the samples are not deposited and something unexpected happens to the rover, it will be inaccessible to the take-off mission, Meyer explained.
“The science community and the engineers will get nervous about all the monsters on board,” Meyer said. ‘When they’re on board, there’s no access to them. They’re in the trunk, but the trunk is locked. At some point, you must decide to let the monsters go, place them on the surface of Mars so that the future mission can collect them. ‘
At the end of the year we can have an idea of where the monsters will be waiting for their ferry to earth.
Tianwen-1’s goals
Although the Chinese National Space Administration did not make much information about Tianwen-1 available to the public, the agency did announce its main objectives and what it was going to do.
Tianwen-1 uses various cameras, radar, and other tools to investigate the soil, structure, and climate of Mars, particularly to investigate the presence of water and ice in the Earth’s earth, according to an article published in Nature Astronomy.
After the lander has settled, a ramp will cause the rover to roll on the surface of the Utopia Planitia, a wide plain hundreds of miles northwest of where Curiosity explored and northeast of where Perseverance is heading.
Despite having little information about the Tianwen-1 mission, Meyer said the fact that the rover is going somewhere is exciting.
“Let’s be honest, every time you send a rover and land somewhere you’ve not landed before, you’re going to learn something new, because now you’re looking at a new place up close,” he said.
Meanwhile, the orbit will serve as a communication relay between the rover and the earth. It will also observe Mars to analyze the planet’s atmosphere and subsoil.
Send hope into a job
The United Arab Emirates has much more information about its Hope orbit mission, so named because the United Arab Emirates’ space agency would like it to inspire people in the Middle East.
The primary purpose of the Hope orbit is to observe, measure and analyze the Martian atmosphere. On board it has an infrared spectrometer, ultraviolet spectrometer and footage to take high-resolution photos.
The infrared spectrometer will be used to study the lower atmosphere, dust, ice clouds, water vapor distribution and temperature. This will help us to have an understanding of the atmosphere and the seasons of the planet.
Hope’s UV spectrometer measures gases in the thermosphere (the second highest layer of the atmosphere), including carbon monoxide and oxygen. And it will create a 3D map of hydrogen and oxygen in the exosphere, the outer layer of the atmosphere.
The Hope orbit is inspected before its launch.
While there are other Mars orbits, such as NASA’s MAVEN, Meyer said Hope’s physical orbit is unique: it is very large and equatorial.
Other orbits such as MAVEN orbit the poles of Mars and run north and south as the planet rotates below. They also stay much closer to the planet, which may give a more detailed look at the planet, but limit their latitude, Meyer said.
‘Due to the large track, it is about 40 000 km the furthest away, [Hope is] to be able to look at Mars as a whole planet, this overview view, ‘Meyer said, noting that it would complement MAVEN and other missions very well.
In addition, Hope will measure atmospheric escape, specifically to hydrogen and oxygen. Scientists know this is happening, but have not yet been able to measure accurately.
After Hope reaches Mars, it will not be long before the Earth receives new images and measurements of Martian weather.
A long time to come
As Schulte and Meyer explained, reaching this level of Mars exploration was a long process. The Perseverance Mission is a step in an astrobiological strategy set out in 1995.
Earlier, NASA was able to “determine that liquid water was distributed near the surface of Mars,” Schulte said. “This, of course, led us to actually look for signs in the rock slabs that life may have left behind on Mars.”
Chris Pong, head of NASA Attitude Control Systems, wears a mask while the mission to Mars continues during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now that technology has caught up with their curiosity, their hard work is bearing fruit, despite the worst pandemic in a century.
“Everything is already difficult and you are throwing in the pandemic where people have to be isolated and people have to be away from their families for long periods of time,” Meyer said. “It’s quite surprising the challenges people have faced to make these missions successful.”