Seven minutes of awful landing on the Red Planet is in the not-too-distant future for the Mars 2020 agency’s mission.
NASA’s 2020 Mars Perseverance rover mission is just 22 days after landing on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft remains approximately 25.2 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) in its journey of 292.5 million miles (470.8 million kilometers) 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.
Only then can the rover – the largest, heaviest, cleanest and most sophisticated six-wheeled robotic geologist ever launched into space – search the Jezero crater for signs of ancient life and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth. .
“NASA has been exploring Mars since Mariner 4 flewby in July 1965, with two more flybys, seven successful orbits and eight landers since then,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Scientific Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “Perseverance, which was built from the collective knowledge gained from such pioneers, has the opportunity to expand not only our knowledge of the Red Planet, but to investigate one of mankind’s most important and interesting questions about the origin of life on Earth.” as well as on Earth. and also on other planets. ”
Jezero Crater is the perfect place to look for signs of ancient microbial life. Billions of years ago, the now dry, 28-mile (45-kilometer-wide) bone basin housed a river delta and a lake full of water. The rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) they collect from the Jezero Sample Caching System of Perseverance could help answer fundamental questions about the existence of life beyond Earth. Two future missions currently in the planning stages by NASA, in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), will work together to bring the evidence back to Earth, where it will be subjected to in-depth analysis by scientists around the world using far too large equipment and complex to send to the Red Planet.
“Sophisticated scientific tools of 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 project scientist for Mars 2020, from Caltech in Pasadena, California. “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. ”
Testing future technology
While most of the seven scientific tools of Perseverance are geared toward learning more about the planet’s geology and astrobiology, the mission also has technologies more focused on future exploration of Mars. MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), a device the size of a car battery in a rover chassis, is designed to demonstrate that it is possible to convert Martian carbon dioxide to oxygen. Future applications of the technology could produce the large amounts of oxygen that would be needed, as a component of rocket fuel that astronauts would rely on to return to Earth, and of course, oxygen could also be used for respiration.
The off-road navigation system helps the rover avoid hazards. The MEDLI2 sensor suite (Mars 2 entry, descent, and landing instrument) collects data as it travels through the Martian atmosphere. Together, the systems will help engineers design future human missions that can land more safely and with higher payloads on other worlds.
Another technological demonstration, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, is attached to the rover’s belly. Between 30 and 90 days after the rover’s mission, the ingenuity will be deployed to try the first experimental flight test on another planet. If that initial flight is successful, the ingenuity will fly four more times. The data obtained during these tests will help the next generation of Mars helicopters to provide an aerial dimension to Mars exploration.
Preparing for the Red Planet
Like people around the world, members of the Mars 2020 team had to make significant changes to their approach to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. While most team members performed their tasks through telework, some tasks required a personal presence at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the rover for the agency and manages the mission. This is what happened last week when the team that will be on the console at JPL during the landing went through a complete three-day simulation, adapted by COVID, of the future landing on February 18 on Mars.
“Don’t let anyone tell you anything else – landing on Mars is hard to do,” said John McNamee, project manager for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL. “But the women and men on this team are the best in the world in what they do. When our spacecraft reaches the top of Mars’ atmosphere at about three and a half miles per second, we will be ready. “
Less than a month of dark and unforgiving interplanetary space remains before landing. NASA television and the agency’s website will broadcast the event live from JPL starting at 11:15 PST (14:15 EST).
Click anywhere on the image to interact with it. This view allows you to watch every step of the entry, descent and landing sequence. You can find out what the spacecraft will experience and how it is designed to respond to stay on the landing course of February 18, 2021. View the full experience. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
More about the mission
A key goal of the Perseverance on Mars mission is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and hide rocks and Martian rule.
Subsequent missions, currently under review by NASA in cooperation with ESA (the European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for further analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of a broader program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. With the task of returning astronauts to the moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon by 2028 through NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, has built and manages the operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
For more information on NASA missions to Mars, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-9011
[email protected]
Gray Tombstone / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]