This time, NASA plans to send its most capable rover to date, Perseverance, Zurbuchen continued. At around 10 feet in length, it is also the longest and heaviest rover built by NASA to date. “Perseverance is our first astrobiology mission,” he noted. “In this case, search for ancient life as part of your main scientific goals.” As such, the space agency has selected Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide sample of Mars believed to have once been the site of an ancient river delta, as its landing destination. NASA coffins are confident that a body of water about the size of Lake Tahoe existed between 3 and 4 billion years ago. NASA hopes to find signs of ancient microbial life, at least some preserved organic molecules, in the carbonite-filled clay that covers the region.
“Perseverance will bring all the human senses to Mars,” Zurbuchen said. “You will feel the air around you, you will see and scan the horizon, you will hear the planet with microphones on the surface for the first time, you will feel that you are collecting samples and perhaps even ‘testing’ them on a census pixel and other instruments that show the chemistry of rocks and soil around it. ”
Perseverance efforts will also help make life easier for the human space explorers that come next. The rover’s numerous scientific experiments will include tests to see how easily carbon dioxide could be converted into respirable oxygen on the planet, how the organic compounds present on Mars interact and degrade space suit materials, as well as mapping efforts from the terrain to explore future landing sites. .
However, the rover will not work alone. Perseverance will work hand in hand with human researchers during its foray into Jezero Crater, said Dr. Michael Watkins, Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We land somewhere in our landing zone, and then our scientists have to find the best places, those pots of gold, that represent this critical habitable environment and also possible biological signatures,” he said. “And that’s where the mission … becomes a partnership between robotics and humans.”
Initially, a team of planetary scientists will guide the rover to promising terrain where Perseverance’s array of optical, X-ray, and ultraviolet cameras will be honed at a target site. The rover will deploy its sample extraction drill to collect and seal samples to return to Earth during the next mission scheduled for 2026, Watkins explained.
“This mission, we are trying to find something we have never encountered before on another planet, and then we are trying to capture and isolate it and bring those samples back for a closer look,” Watkins said. He said, “I really like moon rocks.”
POT
As Perseverance works hard in the mud, the Ingenuity helicopter will launch into the skies above the Red Planet. Technically, Mars can have an atmosphere, it is extremely thin, only about 1 percent as dense as we have on Earth, which makes keeping vehicles up high a very difficult task, despite the lower gravity of the planet compared to ours. The ingenuity tries to demonstrate that we really can. The 4-pound autonomous helicopter will land on Mars tied to the belly of Perseverance. Once on the ground, Ingenuity will spin its 1.2-meter-long blades up to 2,400 RPM and make a series of five test flights over the course of a Martian month.
If its airworthiness is demonstrated, success could open new and wide exploratory avenues on Mars. According to NASA, future missions could lead Ingenuity’s progeny to serve as “robotic explorers, inspecting the terrain from above, or as independent science craft carrying instrument payloads.”
“Today we explore Mars from orbiting spacecraft and rovers moving on the surface,” said MiMi Aung, Mars Helicopter Project Manager at JPL. “In the future, there will be astronauts on the surface. The helicopter can serve as scouts for rovers and astronauts, ”as well as reaching areas that would otherwise be inaccessible from the ground.
“All of that experience will be used in a more capable future helicopter than we envision and will really add that aerial dimension to space exploration for our team,” he continued.
Perseverance and ingenuity will have some company on the planet once they arrive next February. The UAE’s rover Hope launched last weekend and is expected to hit Mars at the same time as NASA. China’s Tianwen-1 mission is slated to start on July 23 and should put an orbiter, lander, and rover on Mars when it arrives early next year.
“With the Moon to Mars Program and robotic forerunners,” concluded NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, “this is all leading us to a day when we have humans living and working not only on the moon but on another planet. , the future is very bright, there are many opportunities. “
