In just 57 days, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars. Mission controllers say it will be “seven minutes of terror,” as this new image dramatically demonstrates.
Produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the digital animation depicts the key events of the Perseverance rover’s Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) events. The video lasts a little over three minutes in length, which is not much shorter than the landing stage itself, which should last about seven minutes. Perseverance launched on July 30th, and the EDL will run on. December 18, 2021 at 3:30 pm EST.
The $ 2.7 billion rover will land in the Jezero crater, the site of a former lake and river delta. Equipped with its many instruments, Perseverance will look for signs of microbial life, study the weather and geology of Mars, and collect samples for a future mission. The rover will also deploy Ingenuity, a small helicopter poised to become the first human-built plane to fly on an alien world.
Of course, persistence will have to hold on to the landing for this to happen. Indeed, Mars is notorious for ending missions before they have a chance to begin – that of the ESA failed Schiaparelli’s mission in 2017 is a recent example.
The first stage of the EDL will see the ejection of the cruise staircase, which houses solar panels, radios and fuel tanks used on the journey to the Red Planet. The descent, like Persistence approaches the atmosphere, it will fire small thrusters at its rear shell to properly orient the vehicle and ensure the heat shield is facing forward. The descent phase will then see the rover race through the thin atmosphere of Mars at speeds of 12,000 mph (19,312 km / h), according to to NASA. Should this phase proceed as planned, the interior of the vessel should not exceed room temperature.
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A supersonic parachute will deploy as soon as the descent phase slows to at least 1,000 mph (1,609 km / h). NASA will introduce a new system called the Range trigger, to determine the most optimal time for parachute deployment, which should occur about 240 seconds after atmospheric entry. The heat shield will then fall as it will no longer be needed exposing the rover to the atmosphere of Mars for the first time.
Another new piece of technology called Terrain-relative navigation, will use video cameras and maps to select the safest place to land.
At most, the parachute will slow the vehicle to about 200 mph (322 km / h), which requires a powered descent. When Persistence is 2,100 feet above the surface, the rocket-powered descent stage begins, slowing the craft to a very manageable 2 mph (3.2 km / h). An air valve then carefully lowers the 2,260.pound (1025-kilogram) rover on the surface, which it will do using a set of 21 feet long (6.4-meters long) cables. The air crane will cut the cables as soon as it detects a landing and then exit the target location.
Nothing but then the for real the fun begins when the rover is free to explore the surface of Mars. The Perseverance mission is expected to last two years, but as the precedent has shown, cwould last much longer. For example, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012, and it’s still going strong. We are very much looking forward to the Perseverance mission, but first and foremost, it must survive those dreaded seven minutes of terror.