The Perseverance Rover from March 2020.
On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 took the first photo taken on the Martian surface. In the decades that followed, several spacecraft in orbit and itinerants gave humanity an unprecedented view of the red planet with astonishing details. This includes surreal Martian sunsets, dust demons in action, and even occasional robot selfies. This fleet of complex devices has also collected keys detailing the ancient beyond the planet and its existing composition.
SEE: Key Details: NASA Mission to Mars (Free PDF) (TechRepublic)
In the coming weeks, NASA will launch the Mars 2020 project to the Red Planet with the Perseverance rover in tow. The project will build on the foundations laid through its predecessors with a robot eye for long-term human Martian exploration.
The three-week launch window for the Mars 2020 project opens on July 30 and runs until August 15. If everything goes as planned, the rover is expected to land on the red planet “just after 3:40 p.m.” February 18, 2021. Before perseverance can begin to the red planet, of course you will have to land safely on the Martian surface. A task that is not lacking in challenges.
After millions of kilometers of area navigation, the area ship will enter the environment of Mars traveling more than 20,000 kilometers in a consistent manner with the hour. Mars has an unusually thin environment that is about a hundred times thinner than Earth’s. This presents a number of difficulties in slowing down the ship enough to allow for a constant landing.
To achieve this feat, the Mars 2020 spacecraft will use a parachute and descent vehicle specially designed to land. This project will also come with the beginnings of navigation relative to the terrain. This formula is designed to identify potentially harmful terrain when the ship descends through the environment of the red planet. The last level of this descent uses a technical strategy known as the “heavenly crane maneuver,” where the rover gently lowers the ship to the Martian surface through a belt.
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In 1997, Sojourner was the first NASA rover to sail on Mars. In the years since this pioneering mission, a lot of other more complicated devices have crossed the Red Planet. Spirit and Opportunity twin rovers landed on Mars in 2004 (the latter was the first to be notorious to complete the first Martian marathon by covering more than 26,219 miles in more than 11 years). Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 and continues to provide NASA with invaluable knowledge to date. In 2018, the copious shipment suffered a worldwide typhoon of massive dust before returning to general operations.
The Mars 2020 rover is the culmination of the latest rover studies and developments. In general, perseverance’s design is mainly based on the configuration of the Mars Curiosity rover. However, the Mars 2020 rover features “a new and more effective wheel design, among other improvements,” according to NASA. The Mars 2020 rover is “the length of a car,” measuring 7 feet high, about 10 feet long, nine feet wide and weighing more than 2,200 pounds.
SEE: Photos: NASA’s Mars rover, Perseverance, is heading for the Red Planet (TechRepublic)
The Mars 2020 rover features six aluminum wheels (three on one side) with tips and small titanium spokes for forward traction and each wheel features an individual engine. As you traverse the rocky landscape, Perseverance can ride on rocks just 16 inches high. On a flat, hard surface, the rover can succeed at a top speed of approximately 4.2 centimeters consistent with the second. This slow and stable speed is designed for energy efficiency. Speed isn’t everything, after all. As NASA publishes, “these are destinations on the road.”
The Mars 2020 project will also provide the debut of the Martian helicopter, officially known as Ingenio. The Mars helicopter weighs just under 4 pounds and will connect to the bottom of the perseverance rover launch and landing.
The small craft featuring two rotors has been engineered to fly through the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere. NASA plans to fly the craft in short bursts; up to 90 seconds at a time. The helicopter will fly between 10 to 15 feet above the ground and traverse nearly 980 feet during these intermittent flights.
NASA hopes the Mars helicopter will provide the agency with a new perspective of the area’s geology. The craft will also be able to observe areas the rover is not able to navigate such as steeper terrain. On future manned missions to Mars, next-generation helicopters could aid astronauts in the exploration process.
Perseverance will be based on the heritage and wisdom gained on missions past Mars. Spirit and Opportunity were the first rovers to find evidence that Mars once had running water. Later, the Curiosity rover discovered situations “that may have had a sustained microbial life” while traveling through Gale Crater. The Mars 2020 rover takes the next step, based on the studies and conclusions of those past missions.
Perseverance is similar to that of the earth in a “great potential” to stumble upon the evidence of the ancient microbial life: the Jezero crater. Billions of years ago, “a river flowed in a water frame along Lake Tahoe” at the siege of Jezero, according to NASA.
“The clinical team has had a lot of internal and external discussions about the fate of the next rover on Mars,” said Ken Farley, a task assignment scientist. “Despite everything, we chose Jezero Crater because it is a very promising position to locate biological molecules and other potential symptoms of microbial life.”
The Perseverance rover features an on-board drill capable of collecting cores from soil and rock samples on the Martian surface. This drilling capability is the first for Mars rovers. Once collected, the samples are stored in garage tubes that NASA calls “deposit depots”.
A long journey of recently in-progress Mars samples can also send those samples to Earth for more complicated research than can be imagined lately on the red planet. These samples would be used to better perceive the prospective evidence of life on Mars. While we might have to wait a little longer to get the clinical benefits of those caches, there are other tools on board to provide faster data in the meantime.
Perseverance will seek to perceive the ancient beyond the Red Planet better, but also to gain wisdom to help scientists plan long-term human exploration missions. For example, mobile tools designed to extract oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars. Other tools will be used to stumble upon potential groundwater resources.
If the onboard generation can demonstrate this capability, it will help the company identify tactics to leverage herbal resources on Mars to create systems for human life. These systems will be very important elements of any project manned to Mars.
NASA illustration featuring a future human habitat on Mars.
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The Mars 2020 project lasts approximately 687 Earth days, the equivalent of a full Martian year. Although pre-Mars projects have unfortunately exceeded their expected life expectancy so far. Opportunity originally planned for a 90-day project and continued to operate on Mars for about 15 years. Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 and his main project “lasted a year on Mars” (about 23 months on Earth). The rover continues to cross the red planet to this day.
R. Dallon Adams is a journalist from Louisville, Kentucky. His past paintings include a wide variety of rhythms and formats ranging from urban plan projects to practical gadget reviews.