CAP CANAVERAL, Fla. – With 8 successful landings on Mars, NASA is increasing bets with its new rover.
The Perseverance spacecraft, expected to take off this week, is NASA’s most muscular and intelligent Mars exploration vehicle to date.
It features lacheck touchdown technology, as well as as the largest number of cameras and microphones ever assembled to capture photographs and sounds from Mars. Its ultra-infected pattern returns to the tubes, for rocks that can involve evidence of life beyond Mars, are the cleanest elements ever connected to space. A helicopter is even following a control flight from the world.
This summer’s third and final project to Mars, after the United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter and the Quest for Heavenly Truth orbiter combo in China, begins with a planned launch Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral. Like other spacecraft, Perseverance is expected to succeed on the Red Planet in February after a seven-month, more than three-million-kilometer adventure.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine doesn’t see it as a competition. “But in fact we welcome more explorers to provide more science than ever before,” he said after a review of the publication Monday, “and we look to the future to see what they’ll find out.”
Here’s a look at perseverance:
PERSEVERANCE VS. CURIOSITY: The six-wheeled Perseverance, long in a car, is a copy of NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been lurking on Mars since 2012, but with more updates and volume. Its 7-foot robotic arm has a more powerful grip and a larger drill to collect rock samples, and is filled with 23 cameras, most commonly in color, plus two more in Ingenuity, the hitchhiking helicopter. The cameras will provide the first glimpse of a parachute emerging on Mars, with two microphones that will allow Earthlings to pay attention for the first time. The Jezero Crater, once home to a river delta and lake, is NASA’s riskiestiest Martian landing site to date due to rocks and cliffs, which are avoided through the spacecraft’s automatic navigation systems. Perseverance also has more self-driving skills, so it can cover more floor than Curiosity. Updates allow for a higher project price: almost $3 billion.
BACKGROUND: Perseverance will drill rocks to the fullest, probably to involve symptoms of ancient life and hide the meeting on the floor while waiting for a long-lasting vehicle. Forty-three pattern tubes are aboard this rover, each carefully cleaned and cooked to eliminate terrestrial microbes. NASA should avoid introducing biological molecules from Earth into the returning Martian patterns. Each tube can contain an ounce of central patterns, and the purpose is to gather about a pound in total to return to Earth. NASA hopes to launch the pickup project in 2026 and patterns from Earth to 2031, at the earliest.
HELICOPTER DEMOSTRATION: The 4-pound helicopter, Ingenuity, will travel to Mars, squeezing the rover’s belly, and a few months after landing, it will attempt to fly alone. Once it falls on the Martian surface, Ingenuity will begin like a bird, emerging at 10 feet in the planet’s incredibly thin environment and flying forward up to 6 feet. With each attempt, he’ll try to pass a little higher and further. “This is actually the Wright brothers’ moment,” said assignment manager MiMi Aung. You have a month to make as many helicopter jumps as possible before the rover goes on to more urgent geological work. In the long run, next-generation helicopters may explore remote Martian territory in search of astronauts or even robots.
HUMAINS: In addition to the helicopter, Perseverance is conducting other experiments that can gain direct advantages from astronauts on Mars. A car battery length tool will turn the car’s atmospheric carbon dioxide into oxygen, an essential element for rocket propellants and breathing systems. Another tool, zapping rocks with lasers to identify biological and mineral molecules, material samples from automotive area suits. NASA needs to see how tissues deal with the harsh Martian environment. It will be at most the 2030s, according to NASA, before astronauts venture to Mars.