Running through space at over 12,000 mph, NASA Rover’s Perseverance on Mars arrived on Mars on Thursday and launched a thrilling seven-minute walk through the atmosphere ground on the surface of the red planet to look for evidence of microbial life past in the remains of an ancient lake.
“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safe on the surface of Mars, ready to start looking for signs of past life!” Swati Mohan, a guidance, navigation and control officer who monitors telemetry at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, called when the rover came down. Delighted, if they are socially distanced, the flight engineers burst into cheers and applause, the anxiety leaving room for relief in the joy of the moment.
GODMOTHER
The relief was understandable. Often described as “seven minutes of terror,” the rover’s descent was one nail biting sequence of computer-orchestrated make-or-break events that had to run almost flawlessly to safely lower the 2,260-pound rover onto an old lake bed in Jezero Crater, avoiding dangerous rocks, large boulders and sand dunes.
And the $ 2.4 billion rover did just that.
“I almost feel like I’m dreaming,” said Jennifer Trosper, deputy project manager. “Our job is to think about all the bad things that can happen and try to avoid them, and when all the good things happen, you feel like you’re dreaming. And I’m happy to feel like you’re dreaming!”
President Biden posted on Twitter: “Congratulations to NASA and all those whose hard work has made possible the historic landing of Perseverance.”
The rover hit the tip of the discernible Martian atmosphere at 15:48 EST and quickly decelerated in an atmospheric friction fire, its thermal shield shielding temperatures up to 2,700 degrees – hot enough to melt stainless steel – and a braking force 10 times the weight force on Earth.
Slowing just below 1,000 mph, it launched a giant 70.5-meter-wide parachute into supersonic slip and used an advanced guidance system to identify hazards and choose a safe landing location on Jezero crater floor.
Then, less than a minute after the touch, at an altitude of about 2.1 miles, Perseverance escaped the parachute, while still descending to about 200 mph. A few seconds later, eight engines from a rocket-powered backpack started, slowing the boat to less than 2 mph until it reached an expected altitude of just 70 meters.
At that moment, Perseverance was lowered to the surface suspended by the tethers while the jet pack continued the descent. At 15:55, the six wheels of the rover landed on the surface, the ties were cut and the “sky crane” backpack flew to collapse at a safe distance.
“Hello, world,” “Perseverance” posted on Twitter a few minutes after landing, posting the first image of the rover about its landing location. “My first look at my eternal home.”
The Earth fell below the horizon, as seen from Jezero Crater, about a minute before the touchdown, interrupting X-band radio signals directly to Earth from Perseverance. But UHF signals confirming the landing were transmitted to the JPL by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was passing overhead.
“The Sky crane maneuver has begun. About 20 meters above the surface,” Mohan reported as the rover’s descent neared completion.
“We are still receiving signals from the MRO,” said one engineer
“Touchdown confirmed!” Mohan called a moment later.
Moments later, the first image came in from one of the rover’s danger cameras, showing a relatively flat surface, with no large boulders or other obstacles in sight. “YES! Whoo Hoo!” exclaimed an engineer when the photo appeared on the control room displays.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The automatic descent of the rover seemed to go flawlessly, as its flight computer used several cameras, radar and other sensors to find out exactly where it was in relation to the planned landing target. The rover then adjusted its course as needed to avoid possible dangers of completing missions.
Perseverance had to take off on its own, as radio signals, which were moving at 186,000 miles per second, took more than 11 minutes to cross the 127 million-mile bay between Earth and Mars. The flight engineers from JPL could only wait, watching the data leak in 11 minutes after the fact.
And to their relief, after seven months launch from Cape CanaveraAnd an interplanetary cruise covering 293 million miles, the fifth NASA rover on Mars, the first specially designed to look for signs of past life, was safely on the surface of the red planet.
Jezero Crater was targeted because it once had a 28-mile body of water the size of Lake Tahoe. The ancient lake was fed by a river that cut the edge of the crater, depositing sediment in a delta similar to a fan clearly visible from orbit. The rover landed about 1.2 miles southeast of the delta, near the center of its 4.8-by-4.1-mile landing footprint.
“We think we’re heading southeast, based on the shadows, at about 140 degrees,” Trosper said. “The tilt is flat, it’s about 1.2 degrees. The power system looks good … everything looks great.”
NASA / JPL-Caltech
A robotic geologist on Mars
Assuming no major problems develop, the engineers plan to spend about 90 days checking the rover’s complex tools and systems.
In the first month, they also plan to implement and test a low of £ 4.5 million, $ 80 million helicopter called Ingeniousness who will attempt the first motor flight in the thin air of Mars, a “Wright brothers moment” on another world.
Another experiment will test the feasibility of extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, a technology that could one day help future astronauts produce their own air and rocket fuel.
But the main purpose of the mission is to look for signs of past biological activity.
Equipped with a robotic arm, a sampling drill and a suite of sophisticated cameras, stone vaporization lasers and other instruments, Perseverance will study the deposits on the lakes, venture into the delta, and finally removed to the shores of the ancient lake, collecting promising evidence along the way.
The selected rocks and soil will be placed in a complex internal carousel mechanism that will photograph, analyze and load them autonomously in lipstick-sized sealed tubes. The rover will then deposit or hide the sealed samples on the surface of Mars to wait for the takeover.
NASA and the European Space Agency plan to send another rover to Jezero later this decade to collect the evidence, load it into a small rocket and throw it into Mars orbit, where another spacecraft will catch them for flight. return to Earth.