NASA’s Perseverance rover nails Mars landing, sends first images of Jezero crater

NASA’s ambitious next-generation Perseverance rover, a one-ton mobile science lab, was slowly lowered to the surface of an ancient lake bed on Mars Thursday afternoon. The landing was at 12:55 p.m. PT on Earth, with NASA Engineer Swati Mohan Delivers Critical Final Words: “Touchdown confirmed.”

Howls and howls echoed throughout NASA’s mission control at the Pasadena, Calif., Jet Propulsion Laboratory as it landed, but it wasn’t like past landings on Mars. Jubilant scientists and engineers jumped out of the chairs, but social distancing requirements kept them (mostly) from their usual warm hugs.

This is what landing a rover on Mars looks like during a global pandemic.

“What an honor to the team,” said Steve Jurczyk, acting administrator of NASA. “Everything went pretty much as planned.”

Before landing, astronomers expressed a mixture of excitement and nervousness. “The only thing that is essential to a successful mission is a safe landing,” said Glen Nagle, head of outreach at Australia’s Canberra Deep Space communications complex, which is part of NASA’s communicating satellite dish network. with robots across the solar system. “Neither we nor the mission scientists have any real control over all of this.”

The Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) procedure is dubbed “the Seven Minutes of Terror” – and for good reason, because a lot can go wrong. But the perseverance hit the atmosphere as it moved at around 12,000 miles per hour and slowed to a complete stop in 420 seconds, a process NASA is practically now having now. NASA last landed a rover on Mars in August 2012, when Curiosity, the cousin of Perseverance, landed to study carbon-based molecules.

The mission is expected to last one year on Mars, or about 687 Earth days. But if history is anything to tell, NASA will be able to expand that further as it has done with previous rover missions, like Curiosity.

In the coming days, we can expect to see and hear how the landing occurred. NASA’s InSight lander listened from its home position, Elysium Planitia, near the equator of Mars, as Perseverance entered the thin atmosphere. And the rover itself is equipped with a suite of cameras and a microphone to capture all the little details. “It’s a new sensory way to engage with the red planet,” said Alice Gorman, space archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia. “We can close our eyes, imagine ourselves standing on the surface of Mars and listening to the sounds of Martian nature.”

The first images of the rover were returned to mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory moments after touchdown. They were captured by the left and right risk prevention cameras, two front cameras on board the rover. They are a bit dusty and only shown in one group, but they are wonderful.

Then the science begins. Perseverance’s mission is about to begin a new era of discovery on the Red Planet. Its landing point in Jezero Crater would once have been covered with water. Where there is water, there is potential for life. “These are the types of conditions under which microbial life began on Earth,” says Brendan Burns, an astrobiologist at the University of New South Wales.

“Percy,” as the rover has been affectionately known, will hopefully discover signs of past life in the crater.

“This mission builds on years of exploration which have shown that Mars was once much more habitable than it is today, but Perseverance can show if it was inhabited,” says Alan Duffy, professor of astrophysics at Swinburne University in Australia.

During a post-touchdown briefing, Ken Farley said the landing site is “a great place to be” because it sits right on the border of two “geological units” – basically it’s in the middle. of different types of rocks. By sampling this area, Perseverance should be able to learn much more about the geological history of Jezero.

This is where NASA’s persistence landed. It is between the border of two geological units. “It’s a great place,” says Ken Farley, a scientist on the Caltech project. “That tells you a lot about the geological history.” pic.twitter.com/qmbkp6DngU

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And the goals of Perseverance span a long, long long into the future, with two key mission elements ready to set the stage for future missions across the cosmos.

The first is a small helicopter, nestled in the belly of the rover, known as Ingenuity. It is only a test drone, but it could become the first device to fly on another planet. Success in the thin atmosphere of Mars will pave the way for missions to other planets and moons. “If Ingenuity proves that we can successfully fly planes to other planets, it will greatly expand the possibilities for exploration in the future,” says Jonti Horner, astrophysicist at the University of South Queensland. Horner points the finger NASA dragonfly, which is expected to fly in the moon sky of Saturn Titan in 2034.

Back on Mars, Perseverance is expected to take soil samples that it can hide and leave on the surface for a future mission to Mars. This return sample would be the first of its kind from the Red Planet. “It’s the coolest thing there is,” says Bonnie Teece, Ph.D. candidate at the Australian Center for Astrobiology. “There are still things we cannot do from afar, and questions we can only answer with samples of Mars here on Earth.” A Russian-led sample return mission was attempted in 2011, but the spacecraft never made it into orbit.

Perseverance launched on July 30, 2020, in the morning sun off the Florida coast aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V. He has spent the past seven months traveling from Earth to Mars, safe from the harsh environment of space in the spaceship Mars 2020.

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