We never get bored talking about Mars missions, even though there are too many past and present
missions to Mars, but still, they never fail to surprise us with something exciting and
new.
Today, we’re going to talk about the latest NASA mission to Mars: the “Mars Perseverance
Mission”, let's get to it.
The reason we see so many missions to mars, especially from NASA, is because the space
agency has its own dedicated “Mars Exploration Program” to better understand Mars.
And the “Perseverance” mission is the latest one so far following on the works of
many missions before it.
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Let us first discuss the interesting name of the rover, where did such a powerful name
come from?
And what does it mean?
The whole story begins when NASA announced a contest called "Name the Rover" where school
students got to submit proposals of suggested names for the spacecraft’s rover.
Thousands of proposals were submitted and the public chose the submission of “Alexander
Mather”, an 8th grad student from “Virginia Middle School” who suggested the name “Perseverance”
“Thomas Zurbuchen”, the associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, said the
following public statement about the name “Perseverance”:
“Alex and his classmates are the Artemis Generation, and they're going to be taking
the next steps into space that lead to Mars.
That inspiring work will always require perseverance.
We can't wait to see that nameplate on Mars.”
So the mission will indeed need perseverance, and just like its powerful name, the mission
also has some powerful goals to achieve on the red planet.
Four main scientific goals will be sought by “Perseverance”:
The first: looking for signs of past life on Mars, and that’s through studying biological
signatures in the Martian rocks that may lead to the discovery of past microbial lives.
The second: Characterization of the Martian climate, through that goal, “Perseverance”
will study the climate to search for ancient environments where past microbial lives could
have existed.
The third: Characterization of the Martian geology, by working on this goal, the rover
will study layers of rocks on the Martian surface to better understand the geological
processes of Mars and the formation of its surface.
And the long term and final goal is to prepare for human exploitation.
This goal has to do with NASA’s plan to send humans to the red planet in the future
as part of the “Artemis Program” in the 2030s, and such a great step must follow tiny
steps of preparation to live on Mars.
These steps of preparation include “Perseverance” demonstrating different technologies for life
support and production of fuel that could be used in the future by astronauts on Mars.
The rover “Perseverance” is also famous for being the first rover that will collect
samples of Martian soil and rocks to be sent back to Earth for analysis.
Each sample will be about 15 grams (half of an ounce) in weight.
The process is called “Sample Caching” and it’s not a trivial one, it consists
of 3 steps only to collect the samples and leave them on the Martian surface!
The first step is “Collecting the Samples”: the rover is equipped with a robotic arm and
a driller to drill up to 5 centimeters (2 inches) under a targeted rock on Mars that
the science team has chosen for being a candidate for supporting past microbial life.
The rover is then going to collect samples in 43 sampling tubes, and another robotic
arm is going to store the tubes in the rover awaiting the next step.
The second step is “Storing Onboard”: in this step, the sampling tubes are in the
rover to get sealed until further instructions from the science team on where to deposit
them on the Martian surface.
The third and final step is “Depositing Samples on the Surface”: by now, the science
team on Earth has chosen one or more locations for the sampling tubes to be deposited.
These locations will be known as "sample cache depot" and are chosen based on landmarks on
the Martian surface and coordinates from orbital measurements.
After “Perseverance” has deposited the samples on the surface of Mars, another 2026
NASA mission called “Sample Retrieval Lander” will deliver a rover that belongs to the European
space agency “ESA.”
This rover is supposed to reach Mars and pick the samples up and prepare them for yet another
later “ESA” mission called “Earth Return Obiter” to bring the samples back to Earth.
Now, let us talk a little bit about the structure of the rover and the science equipment that
will allow it to perform all the scientific goals we mentioned.
“Perseverance” is a six-wheel rover, each wheel has its own motor, but only the front
two and the rear two have steering motors to enable the rover to curve and turn around.
The “brain” of the rover is a 200 megahertz processor, and the rover has two of it in
case one was faulted or damaged.
It also has a flash memory with a storage of 2 gigabytes.
Both the memory and processor are not the conventional type you would find in your computer.
Because on Mars, the radiation is much greater than on Earth, so the processor and memory
on “Perseverance” must be fabricated specially to withstand the radiation on Mars.
One more detail to note about the rover is it’s new and sophisticated robotic arm.
The rover needs to be able to drill and collect samples from the surface of Mars, and to do
that job, it needs a special robotic arm.
The robotic arm on board “Perseverance” is 2.1 meters long (7 feet) and it has 5 degrees
of freedom to allow movement much like the human arm.
At the end of the arm, there’s its “hand” or “turret” as NASA calls it, this hand
hosts some scientific instruments including a 27 milemeter (1 inch) drill that will be
responsible for extracting samples from the Martian surface.
Now, it wouldn’t be a scientific mission without scientific instruments!
Perseverance” carries seven instruments that will allow for great science on the Martian
surface:
Mastcam-Z: a camera mounted on the rover at the eye level, and will be used to take images
and videos of the Martian surface and atmosphere.
The camera can also zoom in distant objects and it has a resolution between 0.15 millimeter
(0.0059 inch)/pixel to 7.4 millimeter (0.3 inches)/pixel.
MEDA: it’s a suite of 6 different sensors that perform a full weather analysis on Mars.
They measure everything related to the weather from the temperature to the humidity to the
direction and speed of wind.
It also gathers information on the radiation and dust particles in the Martian atmosphere.
MOXIE: which is a prototype of an experiment to showcase the possibility of oxygen production
from carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere.
Operating this experiment is important because the same technology will be used by future
astronauts on Mars for fuel and breathing.
PIXL: this instrument is an X-ray spectrometer that is able to identify chemical composition
of rocks.
It also has a camera that can take very fine details.
The instrument is mounted on the hand of the robotic arm.
RIMFAX: this is a ground-penetrating radar imager that is used to see under the surface.
This instrument is particularly useful in studying the Martian geological features.
SHERLOC: named after the famous fictional character “Sherlock Holmes”, this instrument
consists of a spectrometer, a laser and a camera called “WATSON” (yes named after
Sherlock’s partner Dr. “John Watson.”)“
This instrument will search for signs of past microbial life on Mars by studying the minerals
and organic material on the planet.
SuperCam: this instrument also consists of a spectrometer, a laser and a camera, and
it can study objects as far as 7 meters (20 feet).
The SuperCam will be used on an atomic and a molecular level to study the composition
of soil and rocks, It will also search for organic traces on Mars that might be linked
to past life.
All these scientific instruments will perform science on the surface of Mars, but actually,
the science will begin much earlier!
It will begin exactly at the same moment the spacecraft begins entering the Martian atmosphere.
The spacecraft is equipped with different sensors to collect data during entry, descend
and landing, the “MEDLI2” suite of sensors will measure the temperature and the pressure
on the heat shield as well as the afterbody.
Gathering data during the entry, descent and landing is as crucial as the science done
on the surface of Mars, and that’s because it allows engineers and mission designers
to get feedback on their work and to design better missions in the future.
The spacecraft also has some cameras and a microphone dedicated specifically to capture
the moments of entry, descent and landing onto the red planet.
But the spacecraft of this mission does not only carry the rover “Perseverance”, it
also houses the “Entry, Descent, and Landing System” that will help the rover enter the
Martian atmosphere and descend and finally land on the surface.
The same method of “Entery, Descent and landing” has been used before on another
Mars rover: Curiosity.
Using this method, and once the spacecraft reaches the Martian atmosphere, it will photograph
and scan the ground beneath it looking for a candidate landing site that is also close
to the desired target landing site where scientific experiments are to take place.
Once a landing site has been chosen, the spacecraft will use a new technology called “Range
Trigger” to measure the exact time to deploy its parachute so that it wouldn’t miss the
target landing site.
This way, the mission team makes sure the spacecraft doesn’t land on a random site
and wouldn’t have to spend precious time and power moving to the desired landing site.
On descending, the spacecraft will have to know if the landing site it’s headed toward
is safe or full of rocks and hazardous slopes, and that’s where this next new technology
comes in.
The “Perseverance” mission team has come up with the new “Terrain-Relative Navigation”
system to help the spacecraft land safely on the red planet.
This new system works during descent by allowing the spacecraft to create a map of the surface
it’s landing on and compare it to the onboard stored map.
This system can help the spacecraft recognize hazardous terrain up to 300 meters (985 feet)
across and if that’s the case, the spacecraft can divert to another safer surface.
The new “Terrain-Relative Navigation” system will also improve the “Entery, Descent
and landing” method in another way, regarding the spacecraft’s landing position estimation.
With the previous descent system, the spacecraft could estimate its landing position relative
to the ground with an error of up to 2-3 kilometers (1.2-1.8 miles.)
The “Terrain-Relative Navigation” system however, will estimate the landing position
with an accuracy of 60 meters (200 feet) or less
Up until now, “Perseverance” is planned to launch on July 30th with a launch window
extending till August 15th.
The July/August launch window is not chosen by luck, in fact, this window is critical
in the launch process.
Because in the months of July and August, Mars and Earth are closer to each other than
any other time in the year, which means less power is needed to reach the red planet and
in turn less fuel and less overall weight.
The spacecraft will launch from the launch pad “Complex 41” in “Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station” in Florida aboard the famous “Atlas V-541” rocket.
The “Atlas-V” rockets are known for launching a lot of past science missions into space
like the “New Horizons” spacecraft and “Curiosity” rover among others.
If no delays were to occur, the red planet shall welcome the land of “Perseverance”
on February 18th of 2021, exactly at “Jezero Crater” and perform scientific experiments
for approximately 2 years, the equivalent of 1 Mars year, with the intent of expanding
the lifetime of the mission in the future.