- NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is approaching the landing date, which is expected to be just a few weeks away.
- The mission, which includes the Perseverance rover, as well as the Mars Ingenuity helicopter, depends on a successful landing, which is largely in the hands of NASA at the moment.
- The landing sequence is largely automated, so NASA engineers can do little, but they can sit back and hope for the best.
When NASA launched its Mars 2020 mission last year, it was the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. The mission, which has traveled through space for the past few months, is due to arrive on the Martian surface on February 18, and NASA is counting down the seconds until this touchdown is reached.
One of the biggest obstacles that still exists between NASA and a successful Mars 2020 mission is the landing of the rover capsule itself. The so-called “seven minutes of terror” that NASA often talks about landing is essentially a seven-minute window in which the spacecraft will begin its descent and, if all goes as planned, will deliver the most advanced technological machine built. ever for space exploration on the surface of the planet.
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In a new blog post, NASA offers a look at where the mission is and the potential pitfalls in its path:
The spacecraft remains approximately 25.2 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) in its 292.5 million mile (470.8 million kilometers) journey and currently closes that distance at 2.5 miles per second ( 2.5 kilometers per second). Once at the top of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, it awaits an action-packed seven-minute descent – complete with temperatures equivalent to the Sun’s surface, a supersonic parachute inflation and the first autonomous guided landing ever on Mars.
Due to the distance between Mars and Earth, real-time spacecraft control is excluded. Commands would take a few minutes to reach their destination, so it’s up to the spacecraft to consider any variables that could threaten landing and landing.
If the spacecraft is successful and the landing starts smoothly, the potential for new discoveries on Mars is huge. The Perseverance Rover is the most advanced piece of hardware ever sent to Mars and will be able to tell scientists things about the Red Planet that have never been studied in this way.
“Sophisticated scientific tools for perseverance will not only help search for fossilized microbial life, but will also expand our knowledge of Martian geology and its past, present and future,” said Ken Farley, a Caltech scientist working on Mars 2020 mission. a statement. “Our scientific team has been busy planning the best way to work with what we anticipate will be a state-of-the-art data hose. This is the kind of “problem” we look forward to. ”
We can’t wait to see what happens.
Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games over the past decade, covering breaking news and trends in VR, portable devices, smartphones and future technology. Most recently, Mike served as technical editor at The Daily Dot and was featured in USA Today, Time.com and countless other internet outlets and printmakers. His love of reporting is second only to gambling addiction.