Seven minutes of shocking descent to the Red Planet is in the not-so-distant future for the agency’s Mars 2020 mission.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is just 22 days after landing on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft has about 25.6 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) left on its 292.5 million miles (470.8 million kilometers) journey, and is currently closing that distance at 1.6 miles per second (2.5 kilometers per second). Once at the top of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, an action-packed seven-minute descent awaits – complete with temperatures equal to the surface of the sun, supersonic parachute inflation, and the first-ever autonomous guided landing on Mars.
Only then can the rover – the largest, toughest, cleanest, and most advanced six-wheeled robotic geologist ever launched into space – search 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 launched a flyby in July 1965, with two more flybys, seven successful orbiters and eight landers since then,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. . “Perseverance, built from the collective knowledge accumulated from such pioneers, has the potential to expand not only our knowledge of the Red Planet but also one of humanity’s most important and exciting questions about it. to investigate the origins of life on Earth as well as on other planets. “
Jezero Crater is the perfect place to look for signs of ancient microbial life. Billions of years ago, the now bone-dry 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) basin was home to an actively forming river delta and a lake filled with water. The rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) that Jezero’s Perseverance Sample Caching System collects can help answer fundamental questions about the existence of life beyond Earth. Two future missions currently in the planning phase by NASA, in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), will work together to return the samples to Earth, where they will undergo in-depth analysis by scientists around the world using far too large equipment. and complex to send to the Red Planet.
“Perseverance’s advanced scientific instruments will not only aid in the hunt for fossilized microbial life, but also expand our understanding of the geology of Mars and its past, present and future,” said Ken Farley, Mars 2020 project scientist from Caltech in Pasadena, California. “Our science team has been busy planning the best way to work with what we expect will be a firefight of advanced data. That’s the kind of ‘problem’ we look forward to. ”
Test future technology
While most of Perseverance’s seven scientific instruments aim to learn more about the planet’s geology and astrobiology, the mission also includes technologies more focused on future exploration of Mars. MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), a car battery-sized device located in the rover’s chassis, is designed to demonstrate the ability to convert Mars carbon dioxide into oxygen. Future applications of the technology could produce the massive amounts of oxygen that would be needed as part of the rocket fuel that astronauts would rely on to return to Earth, and the oxygen could, of course, also be used for breathing.
The Terrain-Relative Navigation System helps the rover avoid dangers. MEDLI2 (the Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2) sensor suite collects data while traveling through the atmosphere of Mars. Together, the systems will help engineers design future human missions that can land more safely and with greater payloads on other worlds.
Another technology demonstration, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, is attached to the rover’s abdomen. Between 30 and 90 days after the start of the rover’s mission, Ingenuity will be deployed to attempt the first experimental flight test on another planet. If that first flight is successful, Ingenuity will fly four more times. The data collected during these tests will help the next generation of Mars helicopters to provide an aerial dimension to Mars exploration.
Prepare for the red planet
Like people around the world, members of the Mars 2020 team have had to make significant changes to the way they work during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the majority of team members performed their work via telecommuting, some tasks required a personal presence at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the rover for the agency and manages the mission. That was the case last week when the team that will be on console landing at JPL went through a three-day COVID-modified full-up simulation of the upcoming February 18 landing on Mars.
“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise – 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 at what they do. If our spacecraft hits the top of the Martian atmosphere at about three and a half miles per second, we’re done. “
Less than a month of dark, brutal interplanetary space remains before landing. NASA Television and the agency’s website will be covering the event live from JPL starting at 11:15 am PST (2:15 pm EST).
Click anywhere on the image to interact with it. This visualization allows you to track every stage of the gripping entry, descent and landing. You can learn what the spacecraft will experience and how it is designed to respond to stay on course during the February 18, 2021 landing. View the full experience. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
More about the mission
A primary objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize past geology and climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and store Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the red planet. With a mission to bring astronauts to the moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028 through NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.
JPL, which is operated for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and operated the Perseverance rover.
For more on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
For more information about NASA’s Mars missions, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-9011
[email protected]
Gray Gravestone / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]