A large and sophisticated vehicle sent to Mars will land on the red planet next week, embarking on a two-year mission that will search for signs of life and pave the way for future human visits.
That’s right, on Thursday the િવ 2.7bn Perseverance Rover will come down on the Jezero Crater near Martian Equator to explore the planet’s surface and collect samples to send back to Earth. Ultralight-on-board helicopters will also be launched, which will be the first powered flight to another planet.
“It’s a big improvement over what we’ve sent all previous landers and rovers to Earth,” said Andrew Cote, a space science professor at University College Lodge London who has been involved with the Mars mission for 20 years. “
When the previous Curiosity rover landed in 2012, NASA engineers had to endure vehicle-sized perseverance, known to NASA engineers as the “seven-minute terror.” This time it drops to a speed of 20,000 kilometers per hour, when the spacecraft arrives. Martin atmosphere, a touchdown that is slower than walking speed.
Deployed will be an upgraded version of it on technical curiosity, with safety features including a “range trigger” to guide the opening of the craft parachute and increase the likelihood of a gentle touchdown.
To do so, one has to diligently free oneself from its parachute and start a rocket-powered descent – “a kind of jetpack with eight engines will show up on the ground”, said El Chen, the engineer responsible for landing and landing.
The final stage will involve a “sky crane”, which lowers the rover to the surface on a set of cables. When the lander feels that its wheels are touching the ground, it cuts the cables connecting it to the descending vehicle, which flies to the crash-land at a safe distance.
The descent will take only seven minutes but the mission controllers of the Jet Propulsion Lab in California did not know for 11 minutes – the time for radio signals to return to Earth 200m kilometers – if diligently landed safely.
Jezero Crater has been chosen as the drop site because NASA scientists believe it is one of the best places on Mars to find signs of ancient microbial life. 3bn years ago, when water was flowing on Mars, it was a lake, fed by a river through a delta.
The vision will travel around the ancient and now desolate terrain, equipped with tools to dig and examine rocks and soils – physical and chemical – for fossils of ancient life. Scientists do not expect to find living organisms.
The aerial view of the crater will be provided by the Enginity helicopter, which weighs just 1.8 kg, to perform five test flights. It’s not part of a primary science mission, but a technical demonstration by NASA to show how well a rotorcraft can perform in the Martian atmosphere, which is as fast as Earth. Is.
The next visible technol experiment is the toaster-sized Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or Moxie, which will break down electrochemical carbon dioxide into oxygen in the thin air of Mars. If astronauts always have to land and live on the red planet, they need a component for locally produced oxygen and fuel to breathe.
It will also leave a legacy on the surface of Mars with a firm view for future missions. Its sample caching system will place broken rock and dust into metal canisters and leave them to be collected and brought to Earth by a future mission being considered by NASA in collaboration with the European Space Agency.
By the early 2030s, they hope that scientists will be able to analyze these samples in terrestrial labs to send them to another planet using many large and complex devices.
It is possible that Rosalind Franklin Rover may have found signs of past or present life on Mars next year as part of a diligent – or Europe Exomers mission. Stromatolites, among other things, should be considered for geographical evidence of stratified deposits built by microbes in the ancient Jezero Lake.
But to return to Earth may have to wait several years for confirmation for laboratory examination of the samples. “Even if we don’t get a lifetime of evidence, it will still be important,” said Ken Farley, a perceptual project scientist. “We would have explored the depths of the habitable environment and shown that it is not inhabited.”
If, on the other hand, indeterminate evidence for biological activity is found on a single habitable planet that has been further explored from Earth, scientists will be able to draw only one conclusion: the universe is connected to life.
