This illustration shows the events that take place in the last minutes of the nearly seven-month journey from NASA’s Perseverance Rover to Mars. Hundreds of critical events must be performed perfectly and precisely on February 18, 2021 to land the rover safely on Mars. NASA / JPL-Caltech
In less than three weeks, on February 18, NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, will land on the Red Planet. At the same time, two other sins, launched by China and the United Arab Emirates, will intercept the orbit of Mars.
Perseverance is the 11th Mars probe launched by NASA and the most sophisticated robotic explorer ever sent into space. Last Thursday, the spacecraft was about 25.2 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) away from its destination and flew 2.5 km per second to Mars.
“NASA has been exploring Mars since Mariner 4 operated an aerodrome in July 1965, with two more aircraft, seven successful orbits and eight landers since then,” Thomas Zurbuchen, co-administrator of NASA’s Directorate of Science Mission, said in a statement on Wednesday. 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. ”
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The most exciting part of the arrival of Perseverance will be a seven-minute descent that includes supersonic parachute inflation and the first autonomous guided soft landing as soon as the spacecraft enters Mars’ atmosphere.
The SUV-sized vehicle then heads to an area called the Jezero Crater, which scientists say was once a lake, to search for signs of ancient life and collect monsters that will eventually return to Earth. After landing, the rover will use a small camera-equipped helicopter called Ingenuity to explore the surrounding area and identify places of interest that the rover can visit.
Ingenuity is the first aircraft ever designed to fly in an alien world. And many things can go wrong. “It’s going to be a Wright Brothers moment for us,” said Bob Balaram of Jetu’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Popular science magazine on Friday. ‘The first flight of an experimental aircraft was back in Kitty Hawk. You can see how far we have come on earth from such a first step. If we’m successful, it’s going to be a similar moment. ”
Although Mars has a similar surface structure and atmosphere to Earth, it is more difficult to get an airplane from the ground there. The temperature in the Jezero crater can drop to -130 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and only one-third of Ingenuity’s power is usable for flying (the rest must be used to keep electronic components warm enough to function.)
Eight days before the arrival of Perseverance, China’s Tianwen-1 probe, a combination of an orbit, is expected to go to Mars’ orbit. But the mission will not attempt to land on the surface for at least a few months, as the orbit studies potential landing sites in an impact basin called Utopia Planitia, near NASA’s Viking 2 landing site.
And on February 9, the UAE ‘Hope Orbit, the first Mars mission launched by the Middle Eastern country, will enter the orbit of the planet to begin a two-year study of Mars from above.
