Perservering to Mars

Today will be a day in the history books. Today, on February 18, 2021, Perseverance made its touchdown on Mars. After 203 days of traveling 293 million miles, Perseverance safely touched down in Jzero Crater at 12:55 PM PST. This marks the start of a new era of space exploration and the search for life outside of Earth. Perseverance will start crossing the Martian surface after some key instrument and hardware checkouts. Its main goal: hunt for ancient signs of life in Jezero Crater, collect samples and deposit them so a future mission can take them back to Earth to further examine them.

Perseverance's First Image Taken on Mars

On July 30th, Perseverance started its seven-month journey to Jezero crater, Mars, touching on Mars on February 18, 2021. The Mars 2020 Rover Mission was started eight years ago, with Curiosity's landing at Aeolis Palus on Mars on August 6th, 2012. There are many missions that Perseverance will carry out, and there will be multiple firsts along with the mission. There are also multiple robotic and autonomous assemblies onboard Perseverance to help it carry out its numerous missions. The rover was developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in Pasadena, California, and will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. This was the fifth rover launched by NASA.

Mission Control at JPL

As mentioned before, there are multiple missions, and firsts, that Perseverance is hoping to pull off during its time on Mars. Perseverance is hoping to collect more detailed samples of Mars's surface and drilling down into Mars to collect samples. Perseverance can hold between 20 and 30 drilled samples. Perseverance will do a multitude of things with these samples. It will use onboard equipment to tell the composition of the martian soil and determine if there is any form of life in the ground. Perseverance will also cache the samples in safe tubes and deposit them for the later collection so that NASA can test the samples on Earth. 

Curiosity on the Left
Perseverance on the Right

The Perseverance rover is very similar to its predecessor, the Curiosity rover, but Perseverance is a little bit larger and heavier than Curiosity and includes different instruments. Perseverance, for example, has a more advanced sample arm, sample collection, and sample loading system than Curiosity because of the goals of the mission being different. However, there are still many similarities, like both rovers using an RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) to produce power and using similar EDL systems. For more information on the EDL systems, check out the post from the day before. 

RTG on Curiosity

Something I forgot to address in that post was why they have to use the powered sky crane to safely land the rover. This is because Mar’s air is just 1% as thick as that of Earth. This wouldn’t allow for a safe landing using a parachute by itself. Perseverance also used two new technologies to help it in its landings. The first one is called the “range trigger”. This allows the mission to deploy its supersonic parachute autonomously at the right moment. The second one is called “terrain relative navigation”. This allows the sky crane to assess the landscape of Jezero Crater and avoid any potential hazards. Both these technologies helped to decrease the size of the landing ellipse to just 4.8 miles long by 4.1 miles wide. To put this into perspective, Curiosity’s landing ellipse was 4 miles by 12 miles. 

All Mars Rover Landing Siter

Another interesting thing about the launch is that everyone was celebrating 11 minutes late. Now you may be confused when reading this but the data transmitted by Perseverance actually takes 11 minutes to arrive back on Earth. Before entering Mars atmosphere, Perseverance would communicate to one of three radio dishes in California, Spain, and Australia. However, after it enters Mars's atmosphere, the path the data takes changes. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a satellite that orbits around Mars and sends the data from the Mars rovers back to us on Earth. For example, every day, the Curiosity rover has an 8-minute window to transfer its data from it to the MRO, which then sends the data to Earth. A similar process will happen with Perseverance.

Mars Reconosaince Rover

As mentioned before, one of Perverance's missions is actively searching for signs of life on Mars. All this is the culmination of 40 years for Mars rovers. The Viking landers looked for signs of life that were on Mars when they landed. Curiosity looked for evidence that life may have been on Mars, and now Perseverance will try to see if there was life on Mars in the past. Jezero Crater was the perfect place to start its mission. Jezero crater was chosen as the landing site because there is evidence that there was a lake in Jezero crater billions of years ago. This is evident by the delta-like sand patterns and the entrance and exit streams from the crater. Scientists are hoping that they will be able to find signs of microbial life at Jezero crater. Before Jezero crater, multiple sites were being looked into as landing sites. These include Columbia Hills in Gusev crater, Eberswalde crater, Holden crater, Mawrth Vallis, Northeastern Syrtis Major Planum, Nili Fossae, and Southwestern Melas Chasma.

Perseverance's Sample Collection System

With the landing of Perseverance, we are getting closer to answering the age-old question: Are we alone? The way NASA hopes to answer this question is by collecting samples, but NASA doesn’t want to keep them on the robot. They want to bring them back to Earth. During its time on Mars, Perseverance will be able to seal 40 samples that will be sent back to Earth. The program will be a joint program between the ESA and NASA and could bring back the samples as early as 2031.

MOXIE at JPL

But Perseverance itself is also a laboratory. By this, I mean Perseverance is housing some experiments that could help us better understand Mars and get us closer to a future where we colonize Mars. One technology is MOXIE, which stands for Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment. MOXIE is designed to generate oxygen from the carbon dioxide in Mars's atmosphere. This is a very important experiment because not only do we need oxygen to breathe, but oxygen is one of the main ingredients in rocket fuel. 

Ingenuity at JPL

Another important piece of technology is Ingenuity. Ingenuity is a 4-pound helicopter that will be the first rotorcraft ever to fly in the skies of Mars. Ingenuity is expected to make its flight shortly. On Ingenuity, there is one camera and two microphones. However, it won’t be able to fly very far and for long. Ingenuity also uses solar power to keep itself light and allows it to be operational for a few years. The propellers on Ingenuity also spin very fast because the air on Mars is 1% as thick as it is on Earth.

Render of Perseverance on Mars

The Perseverance team has already planned a route for it to follow. First, Perseverance will study Jezero Crater’s delta and collect a few samples. It will then move toward the lakeshore region and eventually climb out of the crater’s rim. As of right now, the Perseverance team has mapped the rover to travel 15 miles, which will take a few years. The main mission for Perseverance is estimated to last only 1 Mars year (687 Earth days). However, it is very likely that the rover will continue to last for a longer period of time.

Today is a day that most people in their lives will remember. Well, I know I will remember it. Perseverance is the start of a new era. It is a new era of space exploration. It is a new era of looking for life outside of Earth. It is a new era for the exploration of Mars. And it's a new era for the future of colonization on Mars. Perseverance is one of the most technologically advanced machines ever built and will teach us for many years to come.

Render of Future Mars Colony

Sources:

Chris James ARC DECRA Fellow. “'7 Minutes of Terror': a Look at the Technology Perseverance Will Need to Survive Landing on Mars.” The Conversation, 16 Feb. 2021, theconversation.com/7-minutes-of-terror-a-look-at-the-technology-perseverance-will-need-to-survive-landing-on-mars-155046. 

“Jezero (Crater).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezero_(crater). 

“Mars 2020.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020. 

“Mars Helicopter Ingenuity.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Helicopter_Ingenuity. 

“NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Landing Animations.” Youtube, JPL, 21 Dec. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzmd7RouGrM. 

“Perseverance (Rover).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover). 

Potter, Sean. “Touchdown! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Safely Lands on Red Planet.” NASA, NASA, 18 Feb. 2021, www.nasa.gov/press-release/touchdown-nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-safely-lands-on-red-planet. 

Pradhan, Arnav. Perseverance: The Rover or The Trait?, Blogger, 21 Dec. 2020, www.arnavpradhan.com/2020/11/perseverance-rover-or-trait.html. 

Pradhan, Arnav. Will Perseverance Persevere Through the Seven Minutes of Terror?, Blogger, 18 Feb. 2021, www.arnavpradhan.com/2021/02/perseverance-landing-and-7-minutes-of.html#more. 

Ree, et al.

Wall, Mike. “A New 7 Minutes of Terror: See the Nail-Biting Mars Landing of NASA's Perseverance Rover in This Video.” Space.com, Space, 16 Feb. 2021, www.space.com/perseverance-mars-2020-rover-landing-video. 

Wall, Mike. “Touchdown! NASA's Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars to Begin Hunt for Signs of Ancient Life.” Space.com, Space, 18 Feb. 2021, www.space.com/perseverance-mars-rover-landing-success.