Mission A-Go for Perseverance

It has been 4 months since Perseverance has landed on Mars and it has already done so much already. In the last 4 months, Perseverance has sent multiple images to NASA, already proved that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be converted into oxygen, and has helped achieve the first powered flight on another planet. However, one of Perseverance’s main missions is to collect samples that will be taken back to Earth to be further analyzed. Just last week, Perseverance started this mission and it may be the key to determining if we aren’t alone in the universe.

Perseverance Next to Ingenuity on Mars

Perseverance is NASA’s newest Mars rover. Its main goal is to find life on Mars and take samples. To take these samples, Perseverance will use its highly advanced arm to drill for samples. Perseverance will also cache these samples for a future mission to collect and bring them back to Earth. For now, Perseverance will store these samples in its sample storage system in the belly of the rover. It launched from LC41 on July 30, 2020, and landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. Jezero crater was picked as the landing site as it once was the site of an ancient river delta. To learn more about Perseverance, check out some of my previous posts where I go more in-depth on the rover.

Over the last 4 months, Perseverance has been preparing for its main mission. As soon as JPL established a connection with Perseverance, Perseverance ran multiple checks to make sure all systems were working. This was extremely important because the 8 month journey to Mars meant that the last time everything was seen working was in July 2020. After confirming all systems were working, and completing some of its smaller missions, the Perseverance started to become more active on Jezero Crater. This shift to a more active rover occurred on June 1, showing that the team at JPL has started to work on the main mission. 

Perseverance Looking Toward a Séítah

The team at JPL has announced that for the next several months, Perseverance will be exploring a 1.5-square-mile patch of Jezero crater. It will collect multiple samples of Jezero crater, but the team is putting an even heavier emphasis on two distinct geological phenomena in the crater: the “Crater Floor Fractured Rough” and the “Séítah”. The “Crater Floor Fractured Rough” contains a lot of ancient and exposed bedrock. The “Séítah” contains a special bedrock that has ridges and sand dunes on it. NASA and JPL want to collect a lot of these samples because they believe it is their best bet at finding life on Mars.

The current plan is for Perseverance to collect and store one to two samples from 4 different locations: Seitah-N, Seitah-S, CF-Fr, and the Raised Ridges. It will only collect one to two samples at each site because Perseverance can carry a maximum of 44 samples and there are many more places NASA wants to collect samples from. Because they can only collect one to two samples from each location, the team at JPL is determining which spots would help the best show the evolution of life in the area. So far, we only know that Jezero Crater was covered in water that was at least 100 meters deep due to satellite imagery. However, that was predicted to be 3.8 billion years ago and scientists don’t know why that has happened and hope they collect samples that will answer these questions. 

Planned Path for Perseverance

After collecting samples at these 4 sites, Perseverance will head on over to its landing site, which is not called the Octavia E. Butler Landing Site, named after the sci-fi writer Octavia E. Butler. After collecting a sample from there, Perseverance will head north to the mouth of the delta, which is named the Three Forks, to collect more samples. After that, Perseverance will start looking at other features on Mars. All in all, the mission is scheduled to last one Mars year, which is about 687 Earth days, though Perseverance will still likely operate after that. The future is looking bright for Perseverance and maybe in the next 10 years, we will find out that we were never alone all because of Perseverance.

Sources:

“Mars 2020.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 June 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020.

NASA, et al., directors. Perseverance Mars Rover’s Mastcam-Z View of 'Van Zyl Overlook' (360 Video + Audio). Youtube, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 9 June 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jq9b4FrWCg. 

Pradhan, Arnav. A Step by Step Guide on How to Create Oxygen on Mars, Blogger, 24 Apr. 2021, www.theaceofspace.org/2021/04/a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-create.html. 

Pradhan, Arnav. Ingenuity Takes Flight, Blogger, 23 Apr. 2021, www.theaceofspace.org/2021/04/ingenutiy-takes-flight.html. 

Pradhan, Arnav. The Ace of Space, Blogger, 24 Apr. 2021, www.theaceofspace.org/search/label/Perseverance. 

Wall, Mike. “NASA's Perseverance Rover Begins 1st Science Campaign on Mars.” Space.com, Space, 10 June 2021, www.space.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-hits-mars-science-road.