NASA has been particularly interested in the planet Mars and has deployed several rovers
to examine the terrain.
Elon Musk, who plans to establish a permanent presence on the planet, has been monitoring
all of the discoveries.
The latest rover to land on Mars is the Perseverance, which is accompanied by a little helicopter
dubbed Ingenuity.
What has NASA's Perseverance uncovered on Mars, and how might the discoveries affect
you?
Stay tuned as we bring you the startling Mars discoveries that have shocked the whole space
industry.
While you view this video, an autonomous vehicle named Perseverance is slogging along millions
of kilometers away on Mars.
It costs a cool 2.7 billion dollars, which is significantly more than any vehicle you
may see on the road today.
Why did NASA invest so heavily in Perseverance?
For years, NASA's Mars exploration program has been systematically attempting to determine
whether life ever existed on Mars.
The agency's Spirit and Opportunity rovers demonstrated that liquid water once existed
on the surface, and NASA's Curiosity rover discovered conditions on Mars around 4 billion
years ago that may have supported life as we know it.
Now Perseverance will directly search for signs of past life.
Perseverance was launched on July 30th, 2020, amid the struggles and panic of the global
Covid-19 pandemic.
It landed on February 18th, 2021, in the Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river
delta, after seven minutes of terror because mission controllers were unable to direct
the process in real time.
The rover will seek for microbial remnants in rocks generated during Mars' warm, wet
past near the crater.
It will also search for carbon-containing molecules known as organics, which are the
building blocks of life on Earth.
NASA has been looking for life on Mars since 1976, when the twin Viking landers performed
long-shot chemistry experiments that yielded inconclusive answers.
Perseverance takes soil and rock samples as it travels and stores them in tubes that will
be collected by future NASA and European space agency missions.
Despite technological breakthroughs in building compact low-power research instruments for
space missions, many types of laboratory analyses still can't be performed in space or can't
be done very precisely.
Furthermore, science is primarily about reproducing results.
Bringing Perseverance's samples back to Earth allows us to conduct the same scientific studies
in multiple laboratories.
What does perseverance look like?
It is a one-ton, six-wheeled Mars rover the size of a small automobile that is designed
in the same way as the nuclear-powered Curiosity.
Perseverance can function in dust storms that prevent solar-powered spacecraft from receiving
sunlight.
To land Perseverance improved on the complicated seven-minute landing routine known as the
"seven minutes of terror."
Perseverance was lowered the final few meters to the surface using a supersonic parachute,
a thruster-powered descent, and nylon cables.
Scientists and mission operators collaborate to move Perseverance to promising places by
utilizing images from navigation cameras strategically positioned around the rover and imagery from
orbiting satellites like as NASA's Mars reconnaissance orbiter.
Perseverance will study any fascinating location, gather a sample, seal it in a tiny tube, and
place the tube on the surface for a pickup to Earth.
Perseverance has two Raman spectrometers, which are research devices that flash ultraviolet
light on a rock or soil patch and examine the reflected light signature to identify
what chemical components are present.
Perseverance has one on its robotic arm called Sherloc, and another inside Super-cam, a device
at the top of the rover's mast that carries a laser that can zap rocks from several meters
away.
Perseverance also has a camera installed on its robotic arm that can see objects as small
as a grain of salt, and its lower rear is equipped with RIMFAX, a radar that can pinpoint
pockets of water up to 10 meters beneath the surface.
A meteorological station named MEDA is on aboard Perseverance, as is Moxie, a car battery-sized
device that will absorb carbon dioxide from Mars' atmosphere and produce oxygen.
Moxie will show the viability of producing oxygen for future humans to breathe and utilize
as rocket fuel on Mars.
Musk will pay close attention to this part since he wants to develop a means for his
Mars colonists to breathe oxygen.
The Perseverance rover is joined by a small helicopter called Ingenuity.
The helicopter has no direct impact on Perseverance's mission, but it will help NASA learn how flying
machines can work on Mars.
Since landing, Perseverance has been busy with its cameras, which have returned over
100 000 images of Mars.
These photos are already helping us understand how the terrain was shaped by water as well
as provide evidence that will guide the search for ancient microbial life.
NASA has made the raw images accessible to the public, which can be viewed in an online
gallery.
The photos include an iconic selfie with Ingenuity.
Ingenuity has flown at least 19 times, with the first on April 19, 2021.
It was the first powered flight to take place on another planet.
Ingenuity has two cameras, one forward-facing 13-megapixel color camera with stereoscopic
imaging capabilities and one downward-facing black and white navigation camera.
Ingenuity not only produces high-resolution shots, but it is also developing a high-fidelity
3D representation of Martian topography.
The kind of 3D image that leaps off the page when you put on those appealing red and blue
glasses.
Perseverance, on the other hand, has accomplished something more spectacular.
In fact, this next breakthrough has the potential to forever transform the face of space exploration.
Another first for this mission occurred when the gold car battery-sized gadget generated
oxygen from carbon dioxide in the low Martian atmosphere.
In other words, moxie will use solid oxide electrolysis to assist people breathe clean
air and return home safely.
Moxie operates by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, compressing and filtering
it to eliminate pollutants, and then heating it to separate the oxygen and carbon monoxide.
Carbon monoxide is released back into the atmosphere while oxygen is separated by a
hot charged ceramic component, forcing oxygen ions to fuse into valuable oxygen.
In one hour, moxie produced around 5.4 grammes of 98% pure oxygen.
This is enough oxygen for a human to breathe for around 10 minutes.
The method consumes a substantial amount of energy and is restricted by the power supply
to 12 grammes per hour, which is roughly the same as the output of a big tree.
Scientists believe that if this technology is expanded up to about 100 times its current
size, it may be utilized to not only supply breathable air for future explorers, but also
as a propellant to lift astronauts off the surface.
You may recall that Musk intends to generate propellant to power the starship directly
on Mars at this point.
Perseverance has also been busy gathering samples; the rover has collected six samples
of Martian rock and atmosphere, and scientists back home are excitedly awaiting and planning
for their return.
Perseverance also drilled six centimeters into the Martian surface and carefully extracted
a rock core, carefully sealing it in a tube.
This was the first time a spacecraft took samples from another planet that could eventually
be returned to Earth.
Once the samples are delivered, scientists can analyze them using technologies that may
be impossible to transfer to Mars.
In addition to collecting samples, Perseverance has achieved another significant confirmation
on Mars.
Scientists have confirmed that the Jezero crater, a dry wind eroded depression today,
was once an ancient lake fed steadily by a 120-mile-long river around 3.7 billion years
ago by analyzing one of the crater's most massive geological features, the delta scarp.
As further proof, the crater also contains a triangular shaped delta where the river
once fed into the lake.
There is a possibility that the river delta was mainly calm.
However, there is evidence of high intensity flooding in the area, maybe driven by a sudden
shift in climate, changing the leisurely meandering stream into rapid moving flash floods.
These waters carried big rocks downstream before dumping them in the lake bottom.
Now that the Perseverance has verified that the landing area was originally a lake, we
may be able to locate signs of ancient aqueous life in the underlying layers.
However, the Perseverance has uncovered organic molecules as well during its brief time on
the planet.
Carbon-containing organic chemicals were discovered in some of the rocks in the Jezero crater
by scanning the habitable environment with a Raman and luminescence for organics and
chemicals instrument.
The molecules containing carbon were discovered in both the interior of the abraded rocks
and the dust of non-abraded rock.
Water is life on Earth, and scientists claim that the first amino acids were produced in
water rich in organic components.
If there are signs of life on Mars, they will most likely be found in or near water, owing
to the early life traces revealed in terrestrial lava tubes.
Martian lava tubes are another interesting candidate, and we believe the delta is covered
with boulders.
We don't know when or how they arrived, but only enormous floods on Earth are capable
of transporting boulders of this size.
We can learn more about Mars' geological history and the extent to which the planet was wet
in the distant past by analyzing images and data collected by RIMFAX, Sherloc and Watson.
The Curiosity rover on Mars has just returned a shot of an intriguing feature in the red
planet's rocks.
It seems to be a beautifully carved Martian gateway.
The lookalike doors are so realistic that you nearly assume there is a secret sanctuary
for Martians or a doorway to another dimension.
This is also giving us tunnel to the center of the planet vibes.
Science fiction movies could at least be inspired by this photo the geological aspect it captures.
However, it is considerably more logical to conclude that this is most likely the result
of a sheer fracture, which occurs when a strain on the rock forces a section of it to break
off, probably with a helping hand from a Mars quake or two.
In fact, the biggest tremor ever recorded on Mars happened on May 4th of this year,
and scientists are still attempting to figure out what caused it and where it was situated.
Furthermore, while the door-like rock formation may appear to be life-size in our imaginations,
scientists believe it is not.
Though it's difficult to tell from the image, the cavity seen in real life might only be
a few centimeters or inches tall.
Mars rover and lander images have shown a remarkable array of the red planet's geology,
including ice-filled craters and chevron-shaped rock formations.
When it comes to scary space discoveries that resemble extraterrestrial dwellings, it's
important not to get carried away with what fuzzy pictures may indicate.
Last year, China's YUTU-2 rover discovered a bizarre cube-shaped object on the moon;
additional investigation found that the alien home was actually just another rock, given
its cuboid shape caused by light and perspective effects.
Given what Curiosity has lately uncovered, this is a possibility.
We didn't even know whether water existed elsewhere in the cosmos until a few years
ago.
Now, we have a small colony of robots on another planet looking for signs of life and peering
into the soil to check if there is water.
Who knows what else Perseverance and Ingenuity will unearth on Mars in the foreseeable future.
Let us know what you think in the comments section below.