In just 57 days, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars. Mission controllers say it will be “seven minutes of terror,” as this new performance dramatically demonstrates.
Produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the digital animation depicts key events during the Perseverance rover’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL). The video lasts just over three minutes of length, which is not much shorter than the landing phase itself, which should take about seven minutes. Perseverance was launched on July 30th, and will do the EDL in February. 18 of 2021 at 3:30 p.m. EST.
The $ 2.7 billion rover will land in Jezero Crater, where there was an ancient lake and river delta. Equipped with its numerous instruments, Perseverance will look for signs of microbial life, study the climate and Martian geology, and collect samples for a future mission to recover. The rover will also deploy Ingenuity, a tiny helicopter that is about to become the first man-made plane to take flight over an alien world.
Of course, perseverance will have to hit the ground running for this to happen. In fact, Mars is famous for finishing missions before they have a chance to start, ESA failed The Schiaparelli mission in 2017 is a recent example.
The first stage of the EDL will see the expulsion of the cruise stage, which hosts solar panels, radios and fuel tanks that are used during the journey to the red planet. The descent stage, com Perseverance approaching the atmosphere, it will fire small thrusters into its rear casing to properly orient the vehicle and to ensure that the heat shield is forward. The descent stage will see the rover they face the thin Martian atmosphere at speeds reaching 19,312 km / h km / h), seconds at NASA. In case this stage goes as planned, the interior of the boat should not be hotter than room temperature.
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A supersonic parachute will be deployed once the descent stage slows to at least 1,000 mph (1,609 km / h). NASA will launch a new system, the Rank trigger, to determine the most optimal time for the parachute to deploy, which should occur about 240 seconds after atmospheric entry. The heat shield will drop as it will it will no longer be necessary exposing the rover to the Martian atmosphere for the first time.
Another new piece of technology, called Navigation relative to the terrain, will use video cameras and maps to choose the safest place for a landing.
At most, the parachute will slow the vehicle down to about 200 mph (322 km / h), which requires a powered descent. When perseverance is 2,100 meters above the surface, the rocket-powered descent stage will start, reducing the boat to a handling speed of 2 mph. (3.2 km / h)). A sky crane will gently lower the 2,260-pound (1,025-kilograms) rover on the surface, which will do with a set of 21 feet long (6.4-meter long) cables. The cell crane will cut the cables once it detects a landing and then withdraw from the target location.
Not more then it will be the real the fun begins as the rover will be free to explore the Martian surface. The Perseverance mission is expected to last two years, but, as the precedent has shown, cit should last much longer. NASA’s Curiosity rover, for example, landed on Mars in 2012 and is still on the move. We long for the mission of Perseverance, but first it is the first: it must survive the dreaded seven minutes of terror.