The Perseverance rover celebrates 1 year of Mars on the Red Planet
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is ending its primary mission to the red planet.
The size of a car Perseverance Rover landed on the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, beginning an ambitious surface mission designed to last one Red Planet year, which is about 687 Earth days.
This time is over; the March The calendar turned to Perseverance on Friday (January 6). But don’t worry: the six-wheeled robot will smoothly transition to an extended mission on Saturday (Jan. 7).
Related: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover’s first year on Mars
Perseverance has two main tasks on the Red Planet. The rover is looking for possible clues mars life on the 45 kilometer wide Jezero floor, which hosted a large lake and river delta billions of years ago. Perseverance is also collecting and caching dozens of samples, which a joint campaign by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) bring to Earth for a detailed study in the early 2030s, if all goes according to plan.
This campaign will launch a NASA rocket lander as well as an ESA Earth-return orbiter to the Red Planet in the mid-to-late 2020s. The plan calls on Perseverance to carry its samples to the ‘landing; The rocket will then launch the precious cargo into Mars orbit, where ESA’s probe will attach it and transport the material back to Earth.
So far, perseverance has come a long way on the sampling front. The rover has already been filled and sealed 18 of its 38 titanium sampling tubes (opens in a new tab) as well as three of its five “witness tubes,” which will help mission team members assess the cleanliness of Perseverance’s sampling system.
And the rover has also started caching samples so far four of the 10 tubes planned in a patch of Jezero’s floor that the mission team calls Three Forks. This deposit is a backup, to cover the possibility that Perseverance will not be able to transport its samples to the lander when the time comes. (The rover is in good health now, but there’s no guarantee that its health will last through the end of the decade.)
In this case, two small helicopters that will be launched on board the landing will pick up the sample tubes from the reservoir one by one.
With this fence in mind, the mission team has been collecting two samples from each of their target rocks. Perseverance is keeping one set on board and saving the other set.
Research helicopters will be heavily based Witthe 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) helicopter that traveled to Mars with Perseverance.
Ingenuity’s main job was to demonstrate that aerial exploration is possible on Mars despite the fact that the planet fine atmosphere, which is only 1% as dense as Earth’s at sea level. The small aircraft quickly achieved that goal during a five-flight demonstration campaign and now serves as Perseverance’s scout on an ambitious extended mission.
Ingenuity now has 37 flights, which together have traveled a total of 4.7 miles (7.6 kilometers). Perseverance, meanwhile, has accumulated nearly 8.7 miles (14.0 km) of driving outside Earth, and that total will increase considerably during its extended mission.
After finishing dropping samples at Three Forks Reservoir, Perseverance will head to the top of the ancient Jezero River Delta, likely finishing the ascent in February. The rover will then explore the region over the next eight months, looking for, among other things, rocks that were washed into the crater by the ancient Jezero River.
“The Delta Top campaign is our chance to see the geologic process beyond the walls of Jezero Crater,” said Perseverance Assistant Project Scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. one last month’s statement (opens in a new tab).
“Billions of years ago, a raging river carried debris and stones from miles beyond the walls of Jezero,” he said. “We’re going to explore these ancient river deposits and get samples of their rocks and long-distance rocks.”
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there (opens in a new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or on Facebook (opens in a new tab).
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