After spending seven months in space for a journey that started on July 30, 2020, the NASA rover named Perseverance finally made it to Mars on February 18, 2021. While this is just the latest rover of many sent to Mars by NASA and other space agencies, the spectacle and level of accomplishment in this task is just as grand as it was the first time.
The event was livestreamed from mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, starting several hours before the rover’s expected landing at 3:55 p.m. Until it reached the top of Mars’ atmosphere, Perseverance was sending back only tones and “1s and 0s” — small bits of information that do little other than assure the people back home that the rover is, at least, reporting no issues. And that’s exactly one of most notable parts of an event like this: how much tension there is in the mission control room leading up to it. Everyone is invested in the rover’s wellbeing, and not only is this something that most of these scientists had been dreaming of their entire lives, the scale of a project like this is hard to grasp for many.
The countdown really began when Perseverance entered Mars’ atmosphere. Called “entry interface,” this is when the atmosphere of the planet begins to affect the rover as it makes its way down to the surface. It is also referred to as the “Seven Minutes of Terror'' because of how difficult it is to maneuver the landing on Mars within the given window; in other words, this is the point where things will either go well or go wrong. At 150 kilometers above the surface and going 5.3 kilometers per second, the rover must slow itself down significantly without much help from the planet’s atmosphere, which is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s.
At 3:53 p.m., the rover confirmed to mission control that it had deployed its parachute to begin deceleration and that its heat shield had separated. A minute later, the reverse thrusters were deployed and Perseverance’s velocity dropped from 90 meter per second to 30 meters per second in a matter of seconds. Finally, at 3:55 p.m., the call was heard from mission control: “Touchdown confirmed — Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars!”
The rover had landed at its destination, Jezero Crater. Just minutes afterward, it sent back black-and-white pictures that gave a view of the vast, rocky wasteland where it will spend the next decade looking for signs of life. Astrobiology is the main purpose of Perseverance’s mission, and for the first time ever, NASA will attempt a round-trip mission where they will send a probe to Mars to take Perseverance’s samples back to Earth. This will allow NASA to analyze the samples for evidence of life as well as investigate the planet’s geological history. Scientists have discovered that Mars used to be a much more Earth-like planet, likely with liquid oceans and a thicker atmosphere that offered both insulation and protection from the sun’s radiation. This poses the possibility that life used to exist, but it will require advanced techniques to find the evidence left behind by such life that no rover is capable of, which is why bringing samples back to Earth is so important.
Among this focus on astrobiology are other features of the Perseverance mission that have major implications for any future human exploration on Mars. The rover is equipped with a drone that can scope out the terrain in detail, and a new kind of technology that extracts oxygen from a carbon-dioxide-heavy atmosphere is being tested. Additionally, it utilized a new landing system that has the capacity to land bigger spacecraft, which is a vital step towards a manned mission.
The Mars samples are expected to be brought back to Earth in 2031 at the earliest. Until then, Perseverance will join the still-active Curiosity rover in roaming the Red Planet for the next several years while scientists back home continue their push towards the first manned mission to another planet in human history.
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