Perseverance rover lands on Mars this week By Lucie AUBOURG Washington (AFP) Feb 16, 2021 After a seven-month journey, NASA's Perseverance rover prepares to touch down on Mars on Thursday after first negotiating a risky landing procedure that will mark the start of its multi-year search for signs of ancient microbial life. The Mars 2020 mission, which set off late from Florida in late July, includes the largest ever vehicle to be dispatched to the Red Planet. Built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it weighs a ton, has a robotic arm that's seven feet (two meters) long, has 19 cameras, and two microphones to record the Martian soundscape. Should it arrive intact, Perseverance will be only the fifth rover to successfully complete the journey since Pathfinder in 1997. All have been American and the last, Curiosity, is still active. China last week placed its Tianwen-1 spacecraft in orbit around Mars carrying both a lander and a rover, which it is hoped to land in May. At around 3:55pm EST Thursday (2055 GMT), Perseverance will place its six wheels on a landing site described as "spectacular" by Ken Farley, a NASA scientist. Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) basin located in the Martian northern hemisphere, had been considered for previous missions, but was considered too difficult to land in until now. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mission control room will have fewer people than normal. "But assuming we do have confirmation of landing, I don't think Covid is gonna be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist pumping," said Matt Wallace, the mission's deputy project manager. The first low resolution photos of the surface will arrive quickly. Video footage, including entry into the atmosphere, is expected later. - Lakes and rivers - Scientists believe that around 3.5 billion years ago, the crater was home to a river that flowed into a lake, depositing sediment in a fan-shaped delta. During this period, "Mars was very similar to Earth in several important ways," said Farley. "It had a substantial atmosphere, it had lakes and rivers on its surface, and it had habitable environments, places where organisms that we know about on earth today could have thrived." Mars is the only known place where such conditions arose outside our planet. Mars 2020 is the first mission with the explicit aim of finding evidence that life once existed there. Over the course of several years, Perseverance will collect and store up to 30 rock and soil samples that will eventually be returned to Earth where labs will analyze them. Its top speed is 152 meters per hour (about 0.1 miles per hour) -- sluggish by Earth standards but faster than any of its predecessors, as it traverses first the delta, then the ancient lake shore, and finally the edges of the crater. The rover could return the samples as part of a planned joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency in the 2030s. "The scientists who will analyze these samples are in school today, they might not even be born yet," said Farley. - Producing oxygen - What would these long awaited signs of life look like? "We should not be looking for fossil teeth or fossil bones or fossil leaves," he said. Rather, it's hunting for organic molecules and other signs of past microbial life, a discovery that would be "fabulous." The first months of the mission won't however be devoted to this primary objective. Parallel experiments are also planned. NASA notably wants to fly, for the first time, a powered aircraft on another planet. The helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, must be able to ascend in an atmosphere just one percent the density of Earth's. Another goal is to help pave the way for future human missions, by developing a system that can convert oxygen from Mars' primarily carbon dioxide atmosphere, much like a plant. The space agency is deploying an instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), using a process called electrolysis to produce about 10 grams of oxygen an hour. NASA is spending approximately $2.4 billion on the Mars 2020 million. Landing and operating the rover costs around $300 million.
Join ASU Mastcam-Z team for a live watch party of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landing Tempe AZ (SPX) Feb 12, 2021 NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will land on Mars Feb. 18, 2021. Onboard the rover is the ASU-led mast-mounted camera system "Mastcam-Z," which can zoom from wide angle to telephoto, take 3D images and videos, and take photos in up to 11 unique colors. ASU will hold a live landing watch party on Feb. 18 beginning at 11:30 a.m. Arizona time (MST) with Mastcam-Z principal investigator Jim Bell, Mastcam-Z ground data system lead Ernest Cisneros and other members of the ASU team, hosted by School ... read more
|
|
The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us. |