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NASA’s Perseverance rover is just days away from its daring seven-minute landing on Mars, where it will land on the most difficult terrain ever targeted by a Red Planet mission.
On February 18, the car-sized Perseverance – the heart of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission – will attempt to land inside the 45-kilometer-wide Jezero Crater. The entry, descent and landing (EDL) phase of a mission to Mars is often referred to as “seven minutes of terror”, because the sequence is so heartbreaking and occurs faster than radio signals can reach Earth from Mars. This means the spacecraft is on its own once it enters the Martian atmosphere – and a gripping new video from NASA shows how the rover will achieve such an incredible feat.
“Space always has a way of throwing curves and surprising us”, Swati Mohan, manager of Mars 2020 guidance, navigation and control operations at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in the video. “There are a lot of things that need to go right in order for Perseverance to be on the ground safely.”
In photos: NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet
The EDL phase begins when the spacecraft reaches the top of the Martian atmosphere and ends with a rocket-powered celestial crane lowering Perseverance safely to the surface of the Red Planet. The entire EDL sequence lasts approximately seven minutes, during which many crucial steps must take place. The stakes are very high Thursday for March 2020, which will search for signs of ancient life and collect samples for humanity’s premiere. interplanetary sample return campaign.
“There’s a lot of reliance on that,” says JPL’s Al Chen, March 2020 entry, descent and landing, in the video. “This is the first stop in our example return relay race – there is a lot of work on the line.”
Shortly before reaching the Red Planet, Perseverance will abandon its cruise leg, which has flown the rover to Mars for the past 6.5 months. The next big milestone is atmospheric inlet, when the rover soars into the Martian sky at around 12,100 mph (19,500 km / h).
The vehicle is fitted with a heat shield that will protect the rover from the intense heat generated during its initial descent and also help slow the spacecraft. About 11 kilometers above the surface, the spacecraft will deploy its 21.5 meters wide. supersonic parachute – the biggest ever sent to another planet, according to the video.
Soon after, the heat shield will separate and move away from the spacecraft, exposing Perseverance to the Martian atmosphere for the first time and relaunching the vehicle’s Terrain-Relative navigation system, which is a new autopilot technology that will help the rover land safely on Mars.
“Perseverance will be the first mission to use terrain-relative navigation,” Mohan explains in the video. “As he descends on the parachute, he will actually take images of the surface of Mars and determine where to go based on what he sees. It is ultimately like landing with your eyes open – having this new technology really helps. Perseverance to Land – far more difficult terrain than Curiosity, or any previous Mars mission. ”
Destination Mars: a timeline of the red planet landings
Perseverance’s EDL sequence is very similar to that of NASA Curiosity rover, which landed in 2012. However, Perseverance is slightly larger and equipped with more advanced scientific instruments, including new technology that will help guide the spacecraft through its difficult landing.
Scientists believe 820-foot-deep (250m) lake is full Crater lake about 3.9 billion to 3.5 billion years ago. The region also has a prominent river delta, where water once flowed and deposited a lot of sediment. Although this landing site offers geologically rich terrain, the boulders, craters, and cliffs make it a very difficult place for Perseverance.
“The science team identified Jezero Crater as fundamentally an ancient lake bed and one of the most promising places to search for evidence of ancient microbial life and to collect samples for future return to Earth,” Matt Smith, of JPL, flight director for the March 2020 cruise operations, said in the video. “The problem is, it’s a much more dangerous place to land.”
In the last minute before Perseverance lands on the Red Planet, the mission sky-crane descent stage will launch eight retrorockets, or landing engines on Mars. Then the Celestial Crane will lower the rover safely to the ground on three nylon cables. Once the rover makes landfall, it will cut the cables connecting it to the descent stage, which will then fly away and crash safely away from Perseverance.
“Surviving those seven minutes is actually just the start of Perseverance,” Chen says in the video. “His job – to be the first step in returning samples; to go looking for those signs of past life on Mars – it can’t all begin until we get Perseverance safely down to the ground, and that Then the real mission begins. ”
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