Currently, traversing space, less than 25 million miles away from its destination, NASA’s Perseverance rover will soon make the most difficult landing ever attempted on Mars before the hunt for ancient life begins.
When he arrives on February 18, Perseverance will enter the atmosphere of Mars at over 12,000 miles per hour, traversing the Martian sky like a meteorite for seven minutes of nail biting before finally reaching Jezero Crater, a site where Rover of curiosity was technologically unable to reach.
NASA scientists call it “seven minutes of terror. “
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The rover must survive both intense heat comparable to the surface of the sun and deceleration as it descends, while trying to land in the right place. A parachute 70 meters in diameter will help slow it down as it tries to find its way to the crater.
Then a “skycrane”, which was also used by Curiosity, will allow perseverance to surface. When the rover finally lands, it will hit the wheels at a slower speed than humans.
“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that entry, descent and landing (EDL) is the most critical and dangerous part of the mission,” Allen Chen, the EDL leader, told a news conference this week. “Success is never guaranteed and this is especially true when we try to land the largest, heaviest and most complicated rover we have ever built in the most dangerous site we have ever tried to land.”
And perseverance must do all this on its own. It takes more than 11 minutes of radio signals to get back to Earth, so the entire EDL will be done without the help of mission control.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
NASA has chosen Crater Lake as a landing site, because scientists believe, based on orbital photographs of the region, that it was once filled with water, hosting an ancient delta of the river. The water has long since disappeared, but the deposits on the lakes make the crater an ideal place to investigate the signs of ancient life.
The crater is full of steep cliffs, sand, boulders and impact craters, all making landing more difficult. When Perseverance reaches, it must do so near the remains of the delta, where traces of the microbial organism could have been established.
“Jezero Crater is a wonderful place, a magnificent place for science. But when I look at it from the perspective of landing, I see the danger,” Chen said. “It’s a formidable challenge.”
Rover Perseverance, which launched in July last year, is the largest vehicle NASA has ever attempted to land on Mars, weighing more than a metric ton and carrying 50% more science and technology than Curiosity, which landed in 2012. Two new technologies will help Perseverance land in Mars safety – a trigger device, which allows the rover to decide when to conduct the parachute and relative navigation of the terrain, which essentially provides the rover’s eyes and a map, so he can check to make sure it lands in the right place.
“If it weren’t for the distance trigger and the relative navigation of the terrain, we just wouldn’t be able to go to Jezero,” Chen said.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The coronavirus pandemic further complicated the landing.
“We hoped that the situation in our world regarding COVID would have improved since its launch. It did not, and that meant we had to be flexible and adapt to continue to work safely and efficiently.” , said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for the Scientific Mission Directorate. “Regardless of everything that happened because of COVID, the constant innovation, dedication and unity above all of this team allowed the work on the Perseverance rover to continue in a safe way.
Perseverance carries a ton of new and cool technology, including a small helicopter named Ingenuity and the tools needed to collect evidence for future study on Earth. For the first time, we will also be able to see and hear what it is like to land on another planet, thanks to a new camera and microphone system.
These new and more precise EDL technologies will help to activate human exploration of the red planet in the future, scientists said.
NASA will broadcast the historic event live on its website on February 18, starting at 14:15 ET.