‘Seven minutes of terror’ await NASA’s persistence on the descent of Mars

In just 57 days, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt a landing on Mars. Mission controllers say it will be “seven minutes of terror”, as this new performance dramatically shows.

Produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the digital animation depicts key events during the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) of the Perseverance rover. The video is just over three minutes long in length, which isn’t much shorter than the landing stage itself, which should take around seven minutes. Perseverance launched on July 30, and will perform the EDL on February. 18, 2021 at 3:30 p.m. EST.

The $ 2.7 billion rover will land at Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river delta. Equipped with its many instruments, Perseverance will look for signs of microbial life, study Martian weather and geology, and collect samples for a future mission to recover. The rover will also deploy Ingenuity, a small helicopter that is about to become the first man-made plane to take flight in an alien world.

Of course, Perseverance will have to hold the landing for all of this to happen. Indeed, Mars is known to end missions before they have a chance to begin – ESA failed The Schiaparelli mission in 2017 is a recent example.

The first stage of the EDL will see the ejection of the cruise stage, which houses solar panels, radios and fuel tanks used during the journey to the Red Planet. The descent stage, as Perseverance approaches the atmosphere, will fire small thrusters at its rear hull to properly orient the vehicle and to ensure the heat shield is facing forward. The descent stage will then see the rover careen through the thin Martian atmosphere at speeds of up to 12,000 mph (19,312 km / h), according to at NASA. If this step goes as planned, the interior of the machine should not get hotter than room temperature.

A supersonic parachute will deploy once the descent stage slows down to at least 1,000 mph (1,609 km / h). NASA will launch a new system, the Range trigger, to determine the most optimal time for parachute deployment, which should occur approximately 240 seconds after atmospheric entry. The heat shield will then fall off as it does no longer be necessary exposing the rover to the Martian atmosphere for the very first time.

Another new piece of technology, called Terrain relative navigation, will use video cameras and maps to choose the safest place for a landing.

At most, the parachute will slow the vehicle down to around 200 mph (322 km / h), requiring a motorized descent. When Perseverance is 6,900 feet (2,100 meters) above the surface, the rocket-powered descent stage starts up, slowing the craft to a very manageable 2 mph (3.2 km / h). A sky crane will then gently lower the 2260-pound (1.025-kilogram) rover on the surface, which it will do using a 21-foot-long (6.4-meter long) cables. The Celestial Crane will cut through the cables once it detects a landing, then free itself from the target site.

Only therefore the real the fun begins as the rover will be free to explore the Martian surface. The Perseverance mission is expected to last two years, but as the previous one has shown, it could last much longer. NASA’s Curiosity rover, for example, landed on Mars in 2012, and it’s still running strong. We look forward to the Perseverance mission, but first of all: it must survive those dreaded seven minutes of terror.