7 things to know about NASA’s rover about to land on Mars

With only about 80 million kilometers to go in its 293 million mile (471 million kilometers) journey, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is approaching its new planetary home. The spacecraft has begun its approach to the Red Planet and in 43 days, on February 18, 2021, Perseverance will pass through Mars’ atmosphere at around 12,100 mph (19,500 km / h), gently touching the surface approximately seven minutes later.

“We are working on our final adjustments to put Perseverance in the perfect position to land in one of the most interesting places on Mars,” said Fernando Abilleira, deputy mission director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The team can’t wait to put these wheels in Martian dirt.”

Built and operated by JPL for NASA, Perseverance will join another rover and lander currently at work on Mars, with several orbiters in the sky above. What sets this six-wheeled robot apart?

1. Perseverance looks for signs of old life.

While the surface of Mars is now a frozen desert, scientists have learned from previous NASA missions that the Red Planet was once home to running water and warmer surface environments that could have supported microbial life. .

“We want Perseverance to help us answer the next logical question: are there really any signs of microbial life spent on Mars?” said Katie Stack Morgan, associate scientist for the project at JPL. “This demanding goal means sending the most sophisticated science robot to date to Mars.”

To address this question, which is essential in the field of astrobiology, Perseverance offers a new suite of cutting-edge scientific instruments. Two of them will play a particularly important role in the search for potential signs of past life: SHERLOC (short 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 instruments will allow scientists to analyze these characteristics together at a higher level of detail than any other Martian rover has ever achieved.

Perseverance will also use certain instruments to collect scientific data from a distance: Mastcam-Z’s cameras can zoom in on rock textures as far away as a football field, while SuperCam will use a laser to zap rock and regolith. (broken rock and dust) to study their composition in the resulting vapor. RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment) will use radar waves to probe underground geological features.

2. The rover lands in a location with high potential to detect these signs of past microbial life.

Interesting ground for scientists can be difficult to reach. Thanks to new technologies that allow Perseverance to target its landing site more precisely and autonomously avoid landing risks, the spacecraft can safely land in a place as intriguing as Jezero Crater, a basin 28 miles wide (45 kilometers wide). which has steep cliffs, sand dunes and rocky fields.

Over 3.5 billion years ago, a river flowed here into a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe, depositing a fan-shaped sediment known as a delta. The Perseverance scientific team believe that this ancient river delta and the lake deposits could have collected and preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life.

3. Perseverance also collects important data on the geology and climate of Mars.

Context is everything. Mars orbiters have collected images and data from the Jezero crater about 200 miles (322 kilometers) above, but finding signs of ancient life on the surface requires much closer inspection. It requires a rover like persistence.

Understanding Mars’ past climatic conditions and reading the geological history embedded in its rocks will give scientists a richer idea of ​​what the planet looked like in its distant past. Studying the geology and climate of the Red Planet might also give us some idea of ​​why Earth and Mars – despite some early similarities – ended up so different.

4. Persistence is the first step on a round trip to Mars.

Verifying ancient life on Mars carries a huge burden of proof. Perseverance is the first rover to bring a sample caching system to Mars in order to condition promising samples for return to Earth on a future mission.

Rather than pulverizing rock like NASA’s Curiosity rover drill 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 it will store until the rover reaches an appropriate drop. off location on Mars. The rover could also potentially deliver the samples to a lander that is part of the sample return campaign planned to Mars by NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency).

Once the samples are here on Earth, we can examine them with instruments too large and too complex to be sent to Mars, providing a lot more information about them than even the most sophisticated rover.

5. Perseverance carries instruments and technologies that will help pave the way for human missions to the Moon and Mars.

Among the future technologies of this mission that will benefit human exploration, there is terrain-relative navigation. As part of the spacecraft’s landing system, Terrain-Relative navigation will allow the descending spacecraft to quickly and autonomously understand its location on the Martian surface and to change its trajectory.

Perseverance will also have more range on the surface than any other rover, including self-driving intelligence that will allow it to cover more terrain in a day with fewer instructions from engineers on Earth. This rapid traverse ability will make exploring the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies more efficient for other vehicles.

In addition, Perseverance is performing a technology experiment called MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) which will produce oxygen from the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars. It will demonstrate a way in which future explorers could produce oxygen for the rocket thruster as well as for breathing.

Two other instruments will help engineers design systems for future human explorers to land and survive on Mars: the MEDLI2 package (Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2) is a next-gen version of what flew on the planet. Mars Science Laboratory mission which delivered the Curiosity rover, while the MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) instrument suite provides information on weather, climate, surface ultraviolet radiation and dust.

Perseverance also gives the Ingenuity Mars helicopter a ride. A technological experiment separate from the rover’s scientific mission, Ingenuity will attempt the first motorized and controlled airplane flight in another world. If the helicopter passes its 30-day Martian (31 Earth-day) demonstration window, the data could aid future explorations of the Red Planet – including those of astronauts – by adding a new aerial dimension.

6. The Perseverance rover embodies the spirit of NASA and the scientific spirit of overcoming challenges.

Getting the spacecraft to the launch pad during a pandemic, looking for signs of old life, collecting samples, and proving new technology are no easy feat. A soft landing on Mars isn’t either: only about 50% of Martian landing attempts, by any space agency, have been successful.

The mission team is inspired by the name of its rover, with a special awareness of the challenges the whole world is experiencing at the moment. With that in mind, the mission installed a special plaque to honor the dedication and hard work of the medical community and first responders around the world. The team hopes to inspire the world, and future explorers, to forge new avenues and make discoveries the next generation can build on.

7. You will be able to ride along.

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 l ‘landing. As with previous Mars missions, the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission plans to make raw and processed images available on the mission’s website.

If all goes well, the public will be able to experience in high definition what it’s like to land on Mars – and hear the sounds of landing for the first time with a standard microphone attached to the side of the rover. Another microphone on SuperCam will help scientists understand the property of the rocks examined by the instrument and will also be able to listen to the wind.

If you are one of the 10.9 million people who have signed up to send your name to Mars, your name is stenciled on one of three silicon chips embedded on a plate on the rover that bears the words “Explore As. a ”in Morse code.

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