NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s Quest for Life on Mars: What You Need to Know

This story is part of Welcome to mars, our series exploring the red planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover hopes to answer our biggest burning question about the history of Mars: Did the red planet ever host life??

The dry and dusty Mars that we know today was very different in the deep past. Mankind’s last rover is heading straight for an area of ​​Mars that was once home to a lake, a perfect place to look for signs of ancient microbes.

Since Sojourner in 1997, NASA has sent a succession of increasingly sophisticated wheel explorers to Mars. Perseverance is the latest and greatest, and in July 2020, he launches on an epic journey through space.

On a mission

Perseverance it will do much more than take amazing images of Mars. Here are some of the key mission objectives:

• Look for signs of ancient microbial life.
• Collect samples of Martian rock and dust and then return to Earth.
• Deliver an experimental helicopter.
• Study the climate and geology of Mars.
• Demonstrate technology for future missions to Mars.

The mission is planned to last at least a year on Mars, which is equivalent to about 687 days on Earth (Mars takes longer to go around the sun). However, NASA has a good record of extending its robotic missions to Mars. We can look at long-lived Opportunity and Curiosity rovers as role models for this.

Lunch time

After a series of delays, Perseverance will now launch before July 30. NASA has delayed the event several times from the original date of July 17. Delays are not yet an issue as the open launch period runs until August 15. NASA will broadcast the rover’s expulsion live.

When: July 30
Where: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Rocket: United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V

The window is important. “Due to the relative positions of Earth and Mars to each other, launch opportunities arise only every 26 months,” NASA said in a June 2020 statement. Losing this window would mean NASA would have to wait until September 2022. for your next shot. The space agency will do its best to ensure that perseverance takes off on time.

Hello mars

As long as the rover launches sometime within the designated time period, it will have the same arrival date: February 18, 2021. The landing process will include some of the most heartbreaking minutes of the entire mission.

Perseverance will test a new method that NASA hopes will bring you as close as possible to your target landing site. NASA calls this the “Range Trigger” technique and it is about deploying the parachutes at the exact moment.

“If the spacecraft were to exceed the landing target, the parachute would deploy earlier,” NASA said. “If it didn’t get close to the target, the parachute would deploy later, after the spacecraft flew a little closer to its target.”

Earth watchers can expect an unprecedented view of the entry, descent, and landing process. The mission is equipped with cameras and a microphone to capture all the excitement and stress as NASA gently attempts to land the perseverance on the surface of Mars.

Jezero Crater

Jezero Crater It is located just north of the equator of Mars and was once home to a river delta. This history of water makes it a privileged place to look for signs of past microbial life. Sounds like the perfect landing spot for a science lab on wheels.

“The Jezero crater landing site offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms dating back 3.6 billion years, that could answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology,” said Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA when it was announced. the site in 2018..

Vital statistics

The car-sized Perseverance rover looks quite similar to its predecessor, Curiosity, but it also represents quite a few technological advancements since Curiosity was designed. Here are the numbers:

Length: 10 feet (3 meters)
Weight: 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms)
Wheel: Six aluminum wheels with titanium spokes.
Maximum speed: Just under 0.1 miles per hour (152 meters per hour)

Science instruments

Perseverance is loaded with seven instruments chosen to help you achieve your mission goals. You can get the full summary from NASA, but here are some highlights:

Mastcam-Z: The rover’s mast-mounted camera system is equivalent to the eyes in the head. According to NASA, their primary job is “to take high-definition videos, panoramic colors, and 3D images of the Martian surface and features in the atmosphere with a zoom lens to magnify distant targets.” The mastcam will be our main viewing window in the Jezero crater.

MOXIE: Mars’ in situ oxygen resource utilization experiment is one of the ways that perseverance is helping prepare humans to go to Mars. This instrument is designed to produce oxygen from the atmosphere from carbon dioxide. This ability will be necessary to help future human explorers breathe, but it would also help us propel rockets on site. That is a necessary step to bring our astronauts from Mars to Earth after their missions.

Supercam: When you put together a camera, laser, and spectrometer, you get SuperCam, an instrument that will help search for organic compounds, a key part of searching for signs of past microbial life. “You can identify the chemical and mineral composition of targets as small as a pencil tip from a distance of more than 20 feet (7 meters),” said NASA.

Sherloc: The “Analysis of habitable environments with Raman and luminescence for organic and chemical products” or Sherloc, as the instrument is affectionately known, will look for signs of life on the red planet. The instrument and its accompanying camera (nicknamed Watson) are capable of taking microscopic images of Mars and analyzing them. Equipped with a laser that can shoot to the surface, Sherloc can measure chemicals in the soil and rocks using a technique known as spectroscopy.

Helicopter on board

“Let’s send a helicopter to Mars” may sound a bit far-fetched, but NASA is doing it anyway. Ingenuity, a small helicopter designed to work in the challenging conditions of the red planet, is tucked into the rover’s belly, where it will depart for the journey.

Ingenuity is a demonstration of high-risk, high-reward technology. It will take a while under the scout vehicle for a few months until NASA finds a suitable place to deploy it. Perseverance will drop him onto the Martian surface and then drift away.

The helicopter will make the first attempt at powered flight on another planet. NASA hopes that the wit will skyrocket and become a model for a new way to investigate other worlds.

Watch this video to learn more about how this little helicopter could change the way we approach space exploration.

Joining his brothers

NASA currently has two machines operating on the surface of Mars, the stationary InSight lander and the Mars Curiosity rover. InSight is located in a region called Elysium Planitia, a large area of ​​plains. Curiosity is navigating around Gale Crater, a giant ditch with a huge mountain inside. Perseverance will be exploring a very different part of the planet as NASA’s legacy of exploring Mars continues.

The last time we had two rovers running on Mars was in 2018 when Opportunity rover lost contact with home due to the impact of a global dust storm. Perseverance will not have the same problems as Opportunity. Like Curiosity, it uses a nuclear power source that does not require sunlight to keep it running.

‘Explore as one’

Perseverance will be a long way from Earth, but it will bring moving memories of your home planet. More than 10.9 million people signed up to have their names travel with the rover through NASA’s Send Your Name to Mars public outreach program. The names are etched on small silicon chips that NASA installed in the rover on an aluminum plate under a protective shield.

The plaque also shows an illustration of Earth, our sun, and Mars. Hidden in the rays of the sun is the “explore as one” message, written in Morse code.

A separate aluminum plate pays tribute to healthcare workers and their efforts to help humanity during the coronavirus pandemic. This plaque bears an illustration of a snake wrapped around a rod with the Earth on top.

These names and messages are a reminder that NASA robotic explorers never really travel alone. Perseverance is the culmination of years of NASA effort, but it is also an emissary to humanity, an extension of our curiosity and sense of wonder and a bit of Earth on Mars.