Seven minutes of disturbing descent to the Red Planet is in the not-too-distant future for the agency’s 2020 Mars mission.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission is just 22 days from landing on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft has approximately 25.6 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) left in its journey of 470.8 million kilometers (292.5 million miles) and is currently covering the distance at 2.5 kilometers per second (2, 5 kilometers per second). Once at the top of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, an action-packed seven minutes of descent awaits – complete with sun-level temperatures, supersonic parachute inflation and the first autonomous guided landing ever on Mars.
Only then can the rover – the largest, heaviest, cleanest and most sophisticated six-wheeled robot geologist ever launched into space – search the Jezero Crater for signs of ancient life and collect monsters that will eventually be returned to Earth.
“NASA has been exploring Mars since Mariner 4 launched an aerodrome in July 1965, with two more planes, seven successful orbits and eight landers since then,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, co-administrator of NASA’s science mission board at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, said. . ‘Perseverance, built from the collective knowledge gained from such pioneers, has the opportunity not only to expand our knowledge of the Red Planet, but also to address one of humanity’s most important and exciting questions about to investigate the origin of life on earth. and also on other planets. ”
Jezero Crater is the perfect place to look for signs of ancient microbial life. Millions of years ago the now bone-dry, 28-kilometer-wide (45-kilometer-wide) home of an actively-forming river delta and lake filled with water. The rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) that Perseverance’s Sample Caching System from Jezero collects can help answer fundamental questions about the existence of life outside the earth. Two future missions currently being planned by NASA, in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), will work together to bring the monsters back to Earth, where they will undergo in-depth analyzes by scientists around the world with far too large equipment. and complex to send to the Red Planet.
“Persistence’s sophisticated scientific tools will not only help hunt the fossilized microbial life, but also expand our knowledge of Mars geology and the past, present and future,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020, from Caltech said in Pasadena. California. ‘Our science team is planning the best way to work with what we expect will be a coughing up of leading data. This is the kind of ‘problem’ we are looking forward to. ”
Test Future Tech
While most of Perseverance’s seven scientific instruments aim to learn more about the geology and astrobiology of the planet, the mission also carries technologies that are more focused on future Mars exploration. MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), a car battery-sized device in the chassis of the car, is designed to show that the conversion of Mars carbon dioxide into oxygen is possible. Future applications of the technology could yield the large amounts of oxygen that would be needed as a component of the rocket fuel that astronauts would rely on to return to Earth, and the oxygen could, of course, also be used to breathe.
The terrain-relative navigation system helps the rover avoid dangers. MEDLI2 (the Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2) sensor suite collects data while traveling through the Mars atmosphere. The systems will help engineers design future human missions that can land on other worlds more safely and with greater payloads.
Another technology demonstration, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, is attached to the belly of the Rover. Between 30 and 90 days after the Rover’s mission, Ingenuity will be used to launch the first experimental flight test on another planet. If the initial flight is successful, Ingenuity will fly four more times. The data obtained during these tests will help the next generation of Mars helicopters to give Mars reconnaissance an air dimension.
Get ready for the Red Planet
Like people around the world, members of the Mars 2020 team had to significantly change their work adjustments during the COVID-19 pandemic. While a majority of team members performed their work via telecommuting, some tasks required a personal presence at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the car for the agency and managed the mission. That was the case last week when the team showing up at the JPL during the landing went through a three-day COVID-adapted full simulation of the upcoming landing on February 18th.
“Do not let anyone tell you otherwise – it’s hard to land on Mars,” said John McNamee, project manager of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission at JPL. ‘But the women and men in this team are the best in the world at what they do. When our spacecraft hits the top of the Martian atmosphere at about three-and-a-half kilometers per second, we are ready. ”
Less than a month’s dark, unforgiving interplanetary space remains before landing. NASA Television and the agency’s website provide live coverage of the event from JPL from 11:15 PST (14:15 EST).
Click anywhere on the image to interact with it. With this visualization you can follow every stage of the disturbing entry, descent and landing series. You can learn what the spacecraft will experience and how it is designed to respond to stay on course during the landing on February 18, 2021. View the full experience. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
More about the mission
An important goal of Perseverance’s mission to Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the geology and climate of the planet, pave the way for the exploration of the Red Planet by man, and be the first mission to collect Mars rock and regolith and place it in the closet.
Subsequent missions, currently being considered by NASA in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. After NASA returns to the moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon by 2028 through NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.
JPL, which is run for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and managed the operations of the Perseverance Rover.
For more information on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
For more information on NASA’s Mars missions, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
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[email protected]
Gray Hautaluoma / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668 / 202-358-1501
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