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NASA’s third probe is approaching its final destination on the surface of Mars, which is called “Perseverance,” which means “resolve” in Arabic.
And the “Perseverance” probe is a car designed to travel on the ground of Mars, which is expected to reach its surface on February 18, in order to search for life forms on the surface of the Red Planet.
Landing on Mars is a difficult process, according to the “New Scientist” website, and 60% of the missions that have been attempted have so far failed.
The Perseverance probe is expected to follow the same process sequence as the Curiosity probe, which successfully landed on the planet’s surface in 2012, using a heat shield and an umbrella.
The use of these two means reduced the descent speed from 20,000 kilometers per hour to only 4,000 kilometers per hour, before a pod called the “Sky Crane” gently put the car on the ground.
Perseverance would have to land in Jezero Crater, which would be the bottom of a dry lake.
“Once you reach the atmosphere of Mars, the winds will flood you and make things difficult to predict,” said a member of the Perseverance team and a researcher at Purdue University in the state of. ‘Indiana.
Additionally, the Jezero Crater landing site is extremely dangerous due to its rugged natural terrain, but the new navigation system attached to the Perseverance probe will take photos as it approaches the surface and independently and safely determine the landing point.
The mission of the Perseverance probe includes searching for evidence of current or past life on Mars.
And the “New Scientist” site claims that despite the probe’s advanced scientific tools, it probably won’t be able to confirm the presence of signs of life, with up to 100% certainty.
“The point is, we are finding strong evidence – like layers of organic material with layers of microscopic tissue on an ancient coast,” Horgan said.
“But we will still have to check and make sure that it was not caused by strange abiotic processes, and in order to do that, we will have to bring samples to the ground and search for them in the laboratory,” the scientist added.
So, the other half of the probe’s mission is to take samples of sand and rocks and pack them carefully in 43 test tubes in the probe’s belly, which it will leave on Mars at a specific location, before returning to Earth.
Another operation should be launched in 2026, to bring these samples back to Earth, according to the New Scientist report.
Lori Glaise, director of planetary science at NASA, described the process at a press conference as “complicated … but it’s worth it,” she said.
“We predict that samples from Mars will provide us with new information for decades to come, while studying them with the latest lab tools that we can’t bring to Mars right now,” Glaise added.
The “New Scientist” report indicates that scientists are still studying the lunar rocks which were caused by the “Apollo” missions between 1969 and 1972, and it is possible that the samples from Mars provide us with an in-depth knowledge of the planet’s surface. red, when studied in the laboratory.
And rocks from Mars might have another benefit, as they could serve as training for crews on missions sent to the Red Planet in the future, which most likely means sending humans to Mars and bringing them back to Earth.
“Perseverance is the first step in the first round trip to another planet,” Wanda Peters, of NASA’s science missions division, said at the press conference.
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