CAPA CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – Spacecraft that want to land on Mars have jumped in front of the planet, burned at the entrance, crashed to the surface and crashed into a fierce dust storm only to spit out a single blurred gray image before dying.
Nearly 50 years after the first casualty on Mars, NASA is trying its hardest Martian touch to date.
The rover called Perseverance it heads Thursday to a compact 5-mile-by-4-mile (8-mile by 6.4-mile) park on the edge of an ancient river delta. It is full of cliffs, pits, sand dunes and rock fields, any of which could condemn the $ 3 billion mission. The ground once submerged could also contain evidence of past life, even more reason to collect samples at this site to return to Earth in ten years.
While NASA has done everything possible to ensure success, “there’s always fear that it won’t work well, it won’t go well,” Erisa Stilley, an engineer on a landing crew, said Tuesday. “We’ve had a good number of successful missions recently and you never want to be the next one that isn’t. It’s heartbreaking when it happens. ”
A look at NASA’s latest mission:
MARS MASTER
NASA has nailed eight of the nine landing attempts, making the U.S. the only country to have achieved a successful touchdown. China hopes to become the second nation in late spring with its own life-seeking explorer; its spacecraft entered orbit around Mars last week along with a UAE spacecraft. The extremely fine atmosphere of the red planet makes it difficult to descend safely. Russia has accumulated the lowest losses on Mars and the moon Phobos, since the early 1970s. The European Space Agency has also tried and failed. Two NASA terrorists are still roaring: the 2012 Curiosity rover and the 2018 InSight. Launched last July, Perseverance will descend 3,200 miles into Jezero Crater, descending with parachutes, rocket engines and a crane into the sky. Millions of lines of software code and hundreds of thousands of electrical parts need to work accurately. “There are no setbacks. There are no retries, “Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace said Wednesday.
THE BEST LANDING
NASA has equipped the 1-ton Perseverance, a more robust version of Curiosity, with the latest landing technology to achieve this touchdown. A new autopilot tool will calculate the distance from the descending rover to the target location and release the massive parachute at the precise moment. Another system will then scan the surface, comparing observations with integrated maps. The rover could deviate up to 600 meters while looking for a safe place, in the style of Neil Armstrong. Without these devices, Jezero Crater would be too risky to try. Once down, the six-wheeled Perseverance should be the best driver Mars has ever seen, with more range and autonomy than Curiosity. “Percy has a new set of kicks,” explained chief engineer Adam Steltzner, “and she’s ready for trouble on that Martian surface with her new wheels.”
LOOKING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE
Where there was water, there may have been life. That’s why NASA wants perseverance to wander around Jezero Crater, once there’s a river-fed lake. It is now dry to the bone, but 3.5 billion years ago this Martian lake was as big and wet as Lake Tahoe in Nevada and California. Perseverance will throw lasers at the rocks judged most likely to contain evidence from past microscopic life, analyzing the emitted steam and piercing the best candidates. A few dozen basic samples (about a pound (half a kilogram) of rock and dust) will be reserved in sealed titanium tubes for future collection.
ROUND TICKET
Scientists have wanted to take over the rocks of Mars since NASA sailors provided the first images near half a century ago. NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency to do this. The bold plan calls for a rover and return rocket to be launched to Mars in 2026, to retrieve the Perseverance sample set. NASA hopes to recover the rocks as early as 2031, several years before the first astronauts could reach the site. The rover’s super sterilized sample tubes are the cleanest components ever sent into space, according to NASA, to prevent polluting traces from Earth.
PRECAUTIONS AGAINST COVID19
Speaking of which, NASA’s Mars Mission Control has never been so flawless. Instead of passing jars of peanuts just before the Perseverance landing (a tradition of good luck dating back decades), masked flight controllers will get their own individual suitcases. It is one of the many COVID-19 precautions of the California jet propulsion laboratory. The landing team will be spread across several rooms, with NASA hairdressers and journalists watching it remotely. Launched last July, Perseverance, with the right name, carries a plaque honoring health workers who have been battling the virus for the past year.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.