NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter were launched successfully from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, at 7.50 am local time (11.50 am GMT) on Thursday 30 July 2020. Perseverance lifted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41, and is due to land in the Jezero Crater on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator, on 18 February 2020. This is a seven month journey that was made possible by an alignment of Earth and Mars. Only a short launch window was available that could have taken advantage of this alignment, so that if the rover had not been launched by 15 August 2020 a much longer journey would have been needed.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket taking off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral on 30 July 2020, carrying NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter on the first leg of their trip to Mars. Kim Shiflett/NASA.
Jezero Crater is a 45 km wide crater that was once home to an ancient river delta, which could have collected and
preserved ancient organic molecules and other potential signs of
microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater
billions of years ago. This ancient lake-delta system offers many promising sampling targets of at
least five different kinds of rock, including clays and carbonates that
have high potential to preserve signatures of past life. In addition,
the material carried into the delta from a large watershed may contain a
wide variety of minerals from inside and outside the crater. Along with the massive nearby river delta and small crater impacts, the
site contains numerous boulders and rocks to the east, cliffs to the
west, and depressions filled with aeolian bedforms (wind-derived ripples
in sand that could trap a rover) in several locations.
The Jezero Crater Delta on Mars, with water carved channels and transported sediments. Examination of spectral data acquired from orbit show that some of these
sediments have minerals that indicate chemical alteration by water. Image combines information from two instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars and the Context Camera. NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Malin Space Science Systems/Brown University.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover will search for signs of ancient
microbial life, which will advance NASA's quest to explore the past
habitability of Mars. The rover has a drill to collect core samples of
Martian rock and soil, then store them in sealed tubes for pickup by a
future mission that would ferry them back to Earth for detailed
analysis. Perseverance will also test technologies to help pave the way
for future Human exploration of Mars.
There are several ways that the mission helps pave the way for future
human expeditions to Mars and demonstrates technologies that may be used
in those endeavors. These include testing a method for producing oxygen
from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as
subsurface water), improving landing techniques, and characterizing
weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could
affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.
Artist's impression of NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover on Mars. NASA.
The mission uses technological innovations already demonstrated
successfully, especially for entry, descent, and landing. Like
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, the Mars 2020
spacecraft uses a guided entry, descent, and landing system. The landing
system on the Mars 2020 mission, as with Curiosity, includes a
parachute, descent vehicle, and an approach called a 'sky crane
maneuver' for lowering the rover on a tether to the surface during the
final seconds before landing.
The Perseverance rover design minimizes costs and risks because it is
largely based on the engineering design for the previous Curiosity
rover. The Perseverance long-range mobility system allows it to travel
on the surface of Mars over 5 to 20 kilometers.
Improvements on Perseverance include a new, more capable wheel design.
And for the first time, the rover carries a drill for coring samples
from Martian rocks and soil. It gathers and stores the cores in tubes on
the Martian surface, using 'depot caching'.
Caching demonstrates a new rover capability of gathering, storing, and
preserving samples. This could potentially pave the way for future
missions to retrieve the samples and ferry them to Earth for intensive
laboratory analysis.
Perseverance will test a technology for extracting oxygen from the
Martian atmosphere, which is 96% carbon dioxide. This demonstration
helps mission planners test ways of using Mars' natural resources to
support Human explorers and improve designs for life support,
transportation, and other important systems for living and working on
Mars. The rover also monitors weather and dust in the Martian
atmosphere. Such studies are important for understanding daily and
seasonal changes on Mars, and will help future human explorers better
predict Martian weather.
The Ingenuity Helicopter will hitch a ride on the Perseverance Rover's belly, covered by a shield to protect it during the descent and
landing. Once at a suitable spot on Mars, the shield covering beneath
the rover will drop. Then, the team will release the helicopter in
several steps to get it safely onto the surface. This will be the first test of powered flight on another planet.
Animation showing Mars Helicopter on the Red Planet, February 2021. NASA.
The helicopter may fly for up to 90 seconds, to distances of almost 300 meters at a time and about 3-5 m from the ground. That's no small feat compared to the first 12-second flight of the Wright Brothers' airplane. The helicopter is designed to fly on its own, without human control. It must take off, fly, and land, with minimal commands from Earth sent in advance.
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