CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – A NASA rover flew to a Mars landing on Thursday in the most risky step yet in an epic quest to return rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on the red planet.
Ground controllers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, nervously settled down for Perseverance’s descent to the surface of Mars, long a deadly trap for incoming spacecraft. It takes 11 1/2 minutes for a signal to confirm success to reach Earth.
The landing of the six-wheeled vehicle would be the third visit to Mars in just over a week. Two spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates and China flew into orbit on consecutive days last week.
All three missions started in July to take advantage of the close alignment of Earth and Mars, covering some 300 million miles in nearly seven months.
Perseverance, the largest, most advanced rover ever sent by NASA, would become the ninth spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, all from the US, starting in the 1970s.
The plutonium-powered rover, the size of a car, aimed at NASA’s smallest and most troublesome target yet – a 5-by-4-mile stretch on an ancient river delta full of wells, cliffs and rocky fields. Scientists believe that if life ever flourished on Mars, it would have happened 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, when water was still flowing over the planet.
Percy, as it is called, was designed to drill down with its 7-foot (2-meter) arm and collect rock samples that may contain signs of bygone microscopic life. The plan required three to four dozen chalk-sized monsters to be sealed in tubes and placed on Mars to be picked up by a pick-up rover and brought home by another rocket ship, with the goal of returning them to Earth as early as 2031. to get. .
Scientists hope to answer one of the central questions of theology, philosophy and space exploration.
‘Are we alone in this kind of vast cosmic desert, are we just flying through space, or is life much more common? Does it just show up when and where the conditions are right? Deputy Project Scientist Ken Williford said. “Big, fundamental questions, and we don’t know the answers yet. So we’re really on the cusp of potentially answering these huge questions.”
China’s spacecraft contains a smaller rover that will also search for evidence of life – if it leaves orbit safely in May or June.
The descent from persistence has been described by NASA as “seven minutes of terror,” in which flight controllers can only watch helplessly. The preprogrammed spacecraft was designed to hit Mars’ thin atmosphere at 12,100 mph (19,500 km / h), then use a parachute to slow it and a rocket-guided platform, known as an overhead crane, to keep the rover running for the rest of its way to the surface. .
Mars has turned out to be a treacherous place: In less than three months in 1999, an American spacecraft was destroyed when it entered orbit because engineers swapped metric and imperial units, and an American lander crashed on Mars after its engines ran out switched off.
NASA is working with the European Space Agency to bring the rocks home. The Perseverance mission alone costs nearly $ 3 billion.
The only way to confirm – or rule out – signs of a past life is to analyze the samples in the world’s best laboratories. Instruments small enough to be sent to Mars would not have the necessary precision.
“The Mars sample return project is probably the most challenging we’ve ever attempted within NASA,” said planetary science director Lori Glaze, “and we’re not doing any of these things alone.”
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