This illustration shows the events taking place in the final minutes of NASA’s Perseverance rover’s nearly seven-month journey to Mars. Hundreds of critical events must be executed perfectly and just in time for the rover to land safely on Mars on February 18, 2021. NASA / JPL-Caltech
In less than three weeks, on Feb. 18, NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, will land on the Red Planet. At the same time, two other probes launched by China and the United Arab Emirates will intercept Mars’ orbit.
Perseverance is the 11th Mars probe launched by NASA and the most advanced robotic explorer ever sent into space. Last Thursday, the spacecraft was about 25.6 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) from its destination and flew to Mars at a speed of 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers) per second.
“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,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement Wednesday. . “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 and other planets as well. ”
Also see: A new space race heats up like three Mars probes from NASA, China, and the UAE
The most exciting part of Perseverance’s arrival will be a seven-minute descent with supersonic parachute inflation and the very first autonomous guided soft landing. once the spacecraft enters the atmosphere of Mars.
The SUV-sized rover will then aim for an area called Jezero Crater, which scientists believe was once a lake, to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth. Once landed, the rover will deploy a small camera-equipped helicopter called Ingenuity to explore the nearby area and identify points of interest for the rover to visit.
Ingenuity is the very first aircraft designed to fly in an alien world. And many things can go wrong. “It will be a moment for Wright’s brothers,” said Bob Balaram of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Ingenuity’s chief engineer. Popular science magazine on Friday. The first flight of an experimental plane was back in Kitty Hawk. You can see how far we’ve come to Earth from such a first step. If we are successful, it will be a similar moment. “
Although Mars has a similar surface structure and atmosphere to Earth, getting a plane off the ground is more difficult than it seems. The temperature in Jezero Crater can drop to -130 degrees Fahrenheit at night, allowing only a third of Ingenuity’s power to be used for flying (the rest must be used to keep electronic parts warm enough to function.)
Eight days before Perseverance arrives, the China Tianwen-1 probe, an orbiter-rover combination, is expected to enter Mars orbit. But the mission won’t attempt to land on the surface for at least a few months as the orbiter is studying potential landings in an impact basin called Utopia Planitia, located near NASA’s Viking 2 landing site.
And on Feb. 9, the UAE’s Hope orbiter, the country’s first Mars mission launched in the Middle East, will enter the planet’s orbit to start a two-year study of Mars from high above.
