CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – Spacecraft aiming to land on Mars have jumped past the planet, burned upon entry, hit the surface and landed amid a fierce dust storm to spew out just a single fuzzy gray photo before dying.
Nearly 50 years after the first victim on Mars, NASA is attempting the heaviest landing on Mars to date.
The robber called Perseverance will be heading for a compact section of 8 kilometers by 6.4 kilometers on the edge of an old river delta on Thursday. It is filled with cliffs, wells, sand dunes, and fields of rocks, all of which could destroy the $ 3 billion mission. The once submerged terrain could also contain evidence of a past life, all the more reason to collect samples from this site for return to Earth in 10 years.
While NASA has done everything possible to ensure success, “there is always the fear that it will not work properly,” Erisa Stilley, a landing crew engineer, said Tuesday. “We’ve had quite a few successful missions lately and you never want to be the next one who isn’t. It’s heartbreaking when it happens. ”
A look at NASA’s latest mission:
MARS MASTER
NASA has made eight of nine landing attempts, making the US the only country to achieve a successful touchdown. China hopes to become the second nation in late spring with its own life-seeking rover; his ship entered orbit around Mars last week with a spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates. The red planet’s extremely thin atmosphere makes it difficult to descend safely. Russia has incurred the most land losses on Mars and moon Phobos since the early 1970s. The European Space Agency has also tried and failed. Two NASA landers are still humming along: the 2012 Curiosity rover and the 2018 InSight. Perseverance launched last July and will travel approximately 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) at Jezero Crater, descending by parachute, rocket engines and overhead crane. The millions of lines of software code and hundreds of thousands of electrical parts must work accurately. ‘There are no setbacks. There are no retries, ”said Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace Wednesday.
STRONGEST LANDING YET
NASA has equipped the 1-ton Perseverance – a more powerful version of Curiosity – with the latest landing technology to beat this touchdown. A new autopilot tool calculates the distance from the descending rover to the target location and releases the massive parachute at the exact moment. Then another system scans the surface and compares observations with on-board maps. The rover could detour up to 600 meters while looking for a Neil Armstrong-style safe spot. Without these gadgets, Jezero Crater would be too risky to try. Once down, the six-wheel persistence should be the best driver Mars has ever seen, with more autonomy and range than curiosity. “Percy has a new set of stairs,” explains Chief Engineer Adam Steltzner, “and she’s ready for trouble on this Martian surface with her new wheels.”
LOOKING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE
Where there was water, there may have been life. That’s why NASA wants persistence poking around the Jezero Crater, once home to a lake fed by a river. It’s bone dry now, but 3.5 billion years ago, this Martian lake was as big and wet as Nevada and California’s Lake Tahoe. Perseverance will fire lasers at rocks believed to be the most likely evidence of past microscopic life, analyze the vapor emitted, and drill into the best candidates. A few dozen core samples – about a pound (half a kilo) of rock and dust – will be kept in sealed titanium tubes for future pickup.
ROUND TRIP TICKET
Scientists have wanted to get their hands on Mars rocks since NASA’s Mariners provided the first close-ups half a century ago. NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency to do just that. The daring plan calls for a rover and a rocket to launch to Mars in 2026 to retrieve Perseverance’s stash of samples. NASA expects to bring the rocks back as early as 2031, several years before the first astronauts could arrive on site. The rover’s super-sterilized sample tubes are the cleanest components ever sent into space to avoid polluting trails from Earth, according to NASA.
PRECAUTIONS COVID19
Speaking of clean, NASA’s Mars Mission Control has never been flawless. Rather than passing on jars of peanuts just before the landing of Perseverance – a tradition of happiness dating back decades – masked flight controllers get their own individual bags. It is one of several COVID-19 precautions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The landing team will be spread across multiple rooms, with NASA bigwigs and journalists at a distance. The aptly named Perseverance was launched last July and bears a plaque honoring health workers who have battled the virus over the past year.
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.