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7 Things to Know about the Perseverance Mars Rover
We’re set to launch the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30. The rover is loaded with scientific instruments and advanced technology, making it the largest, heaviest and most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to the Red Planet.
What is Perseverance’s mission and what will it do on Mars? Here are seven things to know:
1. Perseverance draws on the NASA – and scientific – spirit of overcoming challenges
Not only does it have to launch during a pandemic and land on a treacherous planet, it has to carry out its science goals:
Searching for signs of past microbial life
Mapping out the planet’s geology and climate
Collecting rock and other samples for future return to Earth
Paving the way for human exploration
We chose the name Perseverance from among the 28,000 essays submitted during the "Name the Rover" contest. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the months leading up to the launch in particular have required creative problem solving, teamwork and determination.
2. Perseverance builds on the lessons from other Mars rovers
In 1997, our first Mars rover – Sojourner – showed that a robot could rove on the Red Planet. Spirit and Opportunity, which both landed in 2004, found evidence that Mars once had water before becoming a frozen desert.
Curiosity found evidence that Mars’ Gale Crater was home to a lake billions of years ago and that there was an environment that may have sustained microbial life. Perseverance aims to answer the age-old question – are there any signs that life once existed on Mars?
3. Perseverance will land in a place with high potential to find signs of ancient life
The rover will land in Jezero Crater, a 28-mile wide basin north of the Martian equator. A space rock hit the surface long ago, creating the large hole. Between 3 and 4 billion years ago, a river flowed into a body of water in Jezero the size of Lake Tahoe.
4. Perseverance will also collect important data about Mars’ geology and climate
Mars orbiters have collected images and other data about Jezero Crater from about 200 miles above, but finding signs of past life will need much closer inspection. A rover like Perseverance can look for those signs that may be related to ancient life and analyze the context in which they were found to see if the origins were biological.
5. Perseverance is the first leg of a round trip to Mars
This is the first rover to bring a sample-gathering system to Mars that will package promising samples of rocks and other materials for future return to Earth. NASA and ESA are working on the Mars Sample Return campaign, so we can analyze the rocks and sediment with tools too large and complex to send to space.
6. Perseverance will pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet
Two packages -- one that helps the rover autonomously avoid hazards during landing (TRN) and another that gathers crucial data during the trip through Mars’ atmosphere (MEDLI2) – will help future human missions land safely and with larger payloads on other worlds.
There are two instruments that will specifically help astronauts on the Red Planet. One (MEDA) will provide key information about the planet’s weather, climate and dust activity, while a technology demonstration (MOXIE) aims to extract oxygen from Mars’ mostly carbon-dioxide atmosphere.
7. You get to ride along
Perseverance and other parts of the Mars 2020 spacecraft feature 23 cameras, which is more than any other interplanetary mission in history. Raw images from the camera are set to be released on the mission website.
There are also three silicon chips with the names of nearly 11 million people who signed up to send their names to Mars.
And you can continue to follow the mission on Twitter and Facebook.
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What is the most exciting thing you hope to learn?
Today we celebrate the mission that piqued our curiosities, and drove NASA’s perseverance to pursue further exploration of the Red Planet. The Sojourner rover landed on July 4, 1997, after hitching a ride aboard the Mars Pathfinder mission. Its innovative design became the template for future missions. The rover, named after civil rights pioneer Sojourner Truth, outlived its design life 12 times. This panoramic view of Pathfinder's Ares Vallis landing site shows Sojourner rover is the distance. Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Mars in a Box: How a Metal Chamber on Earth Helps us do Experiments on Mars
Inside this metal box, it’s punishingly cold. The air is unbreathable. The pressure is so low, you’d inflate like a balloon. This metal chamber is essentially Mars in a box — or a near-perfect replica of the Martian environment. This box allows scientists to practice chemistry experiments on Earth before programming NASA’s Curiosity rover to carry them out on Mars. In some cases, scientists use this chamber to duplicate experiments from Mars to better understand the results. This is what’s happening today.
The ladder is set so an engineer can climb to the top of the chamber to drop in a pinch of lab-made Martian rock. A team of scientists is trying to duplicate one of Curiosity’s first experiments to settle some open questions about the origin of certain organic compounds the rover found in Gale Crater on Mars. Today’s sample will be dropped for chemical analysis into a tiny lab inside the chamber known as SAM, which stands for Sample Analysis at Mars. Another SAM lab is on Mars, inside the belly of Curiosity. The SAM lab analyzes rock and soil samples in search of organic matter, which on Earth is usually associated with life. Mars-in-a-box is kept at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
This is Goddard engineer Ariel Siguelnitzky. He is showing how far he has to drop the sample, from the top of the test chamber to the sample collection cup, a small capsule about half an inch (1 centimeter) tall (pictured right below). On Mars, there are no engineers like Siguelnitzky, so Curiosity’s arm drops soil and rock powder through small funnels on its deck. In the photo, Siguelnitzky’s right hand is pointing to a model of the tiny lab, which is about the size of a microwave. SAM will heat the soil to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) to extract the gases inside and reveal the chemical elements the soil is made of. It takes about 30 minutes for the oven to reach that super high temperature.
Each new sample is dropped into one of the white cups set into a carousel inside SAM. There are 74 tiny cups. Inside Curiosity’s SAM lab, the cups are made of quartz glass or metal. After a cup is filled, it’s lifted into an oven inside SAM for heating and analysis.
Amy McAdam, a NASA Goddard geochemist, hands Siguelnitzky the sample. Members of the SAM team made it in the lab using Earthly ingredients that duplicate Martian rock powder. The powder is wrapped in a nickel capsule (see photo below) to protect the sample cups so they can be reused many times. On Mars, there’s no nickel capsule around the sample, which means the sample cups there can’t be reused very much.
SAM needs as little as 45 milligrams of soil or rock powder to reveal the secrets locked in minerals and organic matter on the surface of Mars and in its atmosphere. That’s smaller than a baby aspirin!
Siguelnitzky has pressurized the chamber – raised the air pressure to match that of Earth – in order to open the hatch on top of the Mars box.
Now, he will carefully insert the sample into SAM through one of the two small openings below the hatch. They’re about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) across, the same as on Curiosity. Siguelnitzky will use a special tool to carefully insert the sample capsule about two feet down to the sample cup in the carousel.
Sample drop.
NASA Goddard scientist Samuel Teinturier is reviewing the chemical data, shown in the graphs, coming in from SAM inside Mars-in-a-box. He’s looking to see if the lab-made rock powder shows similar chemical signals to those seen during an earlier experiment on Mars.
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Curiosity Rover: Five Years on Mars
The evening of August 5, 2012…five years ago…our Mars Curiosity rover landed on the Red Planet.
Arriving at Mars at 10:32 p.m. PDT (morning of Aug 6 EDT), this rover would prove to be the most technologically advanced rover ever built.
Curiosity used a series of complicated landing maneuvers never before attempted.
The specialized landing sequence, which employed a giant parachute, a jet-controlled descent vehicle and a daring “sky crane” maneuver similar to rappelling was devised because testing and landing techniques used during previous rover missions could not safely accommodate the much larger and heavier rover.
Curiosity’s mission: To determine whether the Red Planet ever was, or is, habitable to microbial life.
The car-size rover is equipped with 17 cameras, a robotic arm, specialized instruments and an on-board laboratory.
Let’s explore Curiosity’s top 5 discoveries since she landed on Mars five years ago…
1. Gale Crater had conditions suitable for life about 3.5 billion years ago
In 2013, Curiosity’s analysis of a rock sample showed that ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – some of the key chemical ingredients for life – in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater.
Later, in 2014, Curiosity discovered that these conditions lasted for millions of years, perhaps much longer. This interpretation of Curiosity’s findings in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.
2. Organic molecules detected at several locations
In 2014, our Curiosity rover drilled into the Martian surface and detected different organic chemicals in the rock powder. This was the first definitive detection of organics in surface materials of Mars. These Martian organics could either have formed on Mars or been delivered to Mars by meteorites.
Curiosity's findings from analyzing samples of atmosphere and rock powder do not reveal whether Mars has ever harbored living microbes, but the findings do shed light on a chemically active modern Mars and on favorable conditions for life on ancient Mars.
3. Present and active methane in Mars’ atmosphere
Also in 2014, our Curiosity rover measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around the planet. This temporary increase in methane tells us there must be some relatively localized source.
Researchers used Curiosity’s onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory a dozen times in a 20-month period to sniff methane in the atmosphere. During two of those months, in late 2013 and early 2014, four measurements averaged seven parts per billion.
4. Radiation could pose health risks for humans
Measurements taken by our Curiosity rover since launch have provided us with the information needed to design systems to protect human explorers from radiation exposure on deep-space expeditions in the future. Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) was the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft.
The findings indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed our career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used. These measurements are being used to better understand how radiation travels through deep space and how it is affected and changed by the spacecraft structure itself. This, along with research on the International Space Station are helping us develop countermeasures to the impacts of radiation on the human body.
5. A thicker atmosphere and more water in Mars past
In 2015, Curiosity discovered evidence that has led scientists to conclude that ancient Mars was once a warmer, wetter place than it is today.
To produce this more temperate climate, several researchers have suggested that the planet was once shrouded in a much thicker carbon dioxide atmosphere. You may be asking…Where did all the carbon go?
The solar wind stripped away much of Mars’ ancient atmosphere and is still removing tons of it every day. That said, 3.8 billion years ago, Mars might have had a moderately dense atmosphere, with a surface pressure equal to or less than that found on Earth.
Our Curiosity rover continues to explore the Red Planet today. On average, the rover travels about 30 meters per hour and is currently on the lower slope of Mount Sharp.
Get regular updates on the Curiosity mission by following @MarsCuriosity on Twitter.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
This week, we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the moment our Mars Science Laboratory mission landed the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater.
In fact, this summer brings several red letter days in Red Planet exploration. Here are 10 things to know about the anniversary of the Curiosity landing—plus some other arrivals at Mars you may not know about.
This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at a drilled sample site called "Okoruso," on the "Naukluft Plateau" of lower Mount Sharp. The scene combines multiple images taken with the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on May 11, 2016. Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
1. Seven Minutes of Terror
For Curiosity, landing on Mars meant slowing from about 13,000 MPH (21,000 KPH) to a full stop in just seven minutes. Engineers came up with an innovative--and bold--plan to make this happen, but no one could be 100% certain it would work. In this video, some of the Curiosity engineers who designed the entry, descent and landing system for the mission talk candidly about the challenges of Curiosity's final moments before touchdown in August 2012.
2. Sweet Success
Relive the tension, and the celebration, of the night Curiosity landed on Mars. You can also simulate the entire landing process in 3-D on your own computer using NASA's free Eyes on the Solar System app.
3. Echoes of Ancient Waters
What has Curiosity discovered during its roving so far? The key takeaway: the stark deserts of Gale Crater were once home to lakes and streams of liquid water, a place where life could potentially have thrived. Learn more about the mission's scientific findings.
4. Pretty as a Postcard
Sometimes science can be beautiful, as pictures from Mars prove. You can peruse some of Curiosity's best shots. What's more, you can see the very latest images—often on the same day they're downlinked from Mars.
5. Take It for a Spin
Have you ever wanted to try driving a Mars rover yourself? You can (virtually anyway). Try the Experience Curiosity app right in your web browser.
6. Mars Trekking
Maybe someday you'll be able to take a day hike across the Martian landscape. You can at least plan your route right now, using NASA's Mars Trek site. This interactive mapping tool lets you explore important Red Planet locations using actual terrain imagery from orbiting satellites. You can even retrace the real locations on Mars where the fictional astronaut Mark Watney traveled in "The Martian."
7. A First Time for Everything
Curiosity stands (well, rolls) on the shoulders of giants. Several NASA missions blazed the trail for the current crop of robotic explorers. The first was Mariner 4, which is also celebrating an anniversary this summer. Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to return photos of another planet from deep space when it flew by Mars on July 15, 1965. Mariner engineers were so impatient to see the first pictures it sent back, that they hand-colored a printout of raw numeric data sent by the spacecraft, in order to construct one of the first color images of Mars.
8. Pathfinders and Panoramas
Another important pathfinder on Mars was...Mars Pathfinder. This mission just marked its 20th anniversary. To commemorate the first successful Mars rover, NASA created a new 360-degree VR panorama of its landing site you can view right in your browser.
9. One Small Step for a Robot
The first spacecraft to make a successful landing on Mars was Viking 1, which touched down in the Chryse Planitia region on July 20, 1976. It worked for more than six years, performing the first Martian soil analysis using its robotic arm and an onbaord biological laboratory. While it found no conclusive evidence of life, Viking 1 did help us understand Mars as a planet with volcanic soil, a thin, dry carbon dioxide atmosphere and striking evidence for ancient river beds and vast flooding.
10. Mars Explorers Needed
There is much more to come. The next Mars lander, InSight, is slated for launch next year. Ride along with NASA's ongoing adventures on the Red Planet at: mars.nasa.gov/mars-exploration/
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We use filters and adjustments to bring out details in the images Perseverance sends us from Mars. These adjustments help scientists on Earth learn more about our planetary neighbor. #nasajpl #perseverance #stem #marsrover #solarsystemambassador . . jmbrackett.com https://www.instagram.com/p/CL8QvzSjhYR/?igshid=1e5frwtksyn6e
Gathering materials for my first Solar System Ambassador event, the landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars. This one hits me a little differently, since I had a small part as a judge in the name choice essays. Perseverance touches down on Mars on February 18, 2021. #mars #perseverance @nasa @nasasolarsystem #space #marsrover #mars2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/CLBiu2uD1gX/?igshid=1x25d71dp0b22
If Alan Shepard can take swings on the Moon, then I call dibs on Mars. I’ll have Perseverance data to keep me out of the bunkers. @nasa @nasajpl #mars #perseverance #nasaperseverance #marsrover #mars2020 #mars2020rover https://www.instagram.com/p/CDsSY85nQoj/?igshid=192a1toh0qhtm
Looking forward to the launch of Perseverance as part of MARS2020. Hoping to continue conducting educational opportunities for students in my area. @nasa @nasajpl #mars #marsrover #perseverance #stem #steam #stemeducation @nasasolarsystem https://www.instagram.com/p/CDNrSYAHsR3/?igshid=1c5lo9rnvwtop
I was honored to be selected as a judge for this contest. A young man named Alexander Mather from Virginia chose the name “Perseverance” and wrote the winning essay. Perseverance is scheduled to launch to Mars this July. @nasa @nasajpl #nasa #mars #marsrover #space #perseverance #mars2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/CBS-LPVH6tj/?igshid=1pzag6xydhku4
Kids These Days...
Before judging the first round of submissions in the NASA / JPL Name the Mars 2020 Rover Contest, I didn’t quite know what to expect from the various young minds. I knew I was going to see the occasional Rover McRoverface, or the overly complicated acronyms.
However, some of these kids really got what this is all about. Their essays conveyed how much they really want to invest in science and the future of space exploration. You could see the amount of research that went into their name choices. Several times, I had to look up words or the meanings behind possible name choices. Leave it to me to accidentally ok a cool sounding name that belongs to an anime character who farts a lot. (didn’t really happen)
It wasn’t just the scientific names and essays that were rewarding. Some students wrote passionate essays about naming the rover after a beloved relative or pet. The level of respect and/or compassion from the minds of fifth graders almost had me in tears at some points.
Congratulations @nasa! Looking forward to #Artemis!
Today we celebrate the mission that piqued our curiosities, and drove NASA’s perseverance to pursue further exploration of the Red Planet. The Sojourner rover landed on July 4, 1997, after hitching a ride aboard the Mars Pathfinder mission. Its innovative design became the template for future missions. The rover, named after civil rights pioneer Sojourner Truth, outlived its design life 12 times. This panoramic view of Pathfinder’s Ares Vallis landing site shows Sojourner rover is the distance. Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
El desafío de enviar tripulantes a Marte: La carrera por llegar a Marte ha hecho posible que se desarrollen tecnologías que permitan un vuelo confortable para los astronautas. Sin embargo, la NASA afirma que ellos estarían expuestos a "radiación cósmica", la cual es un conjunto de ondas electromagnéticas que, al toparse con algún cuerpo, puede aumentarle riesgo de cáncer, alguna enfermedad por radiación, entre otros malestares. Para saber la magnitud de esa radiación, los científicos expusieron a condiciones similares a un grupo de roedores que terminaron con severos problemas neurocognitivos. Según Munjal Acharya (radiólogo oncólogo de la Universidad de California) los astronautas podrían sufrir complicaciones que afectarían su memoria y aprendizaje, lo que impediría que puedan responder satisfactoriamente a problemas no previstos durante el vuelo. Ante esta situación, la NASA trabaja en posibles soluciones como la implementación de dispositivos que añadan masa para contrarrestar la radiación. Esto sería utilizado en un viaje no tripulado donde incluirán muñecos de prueba. Fuente: BBC #DeimosPerú #roverchallenge #PUCP #roverchallenge2020 #marsrover #NASA https://www.instagram.com/p/B2yvC3ahEzq/?igshid=z976uugaau5c
Un volcán es una estructura geológica por la que emergen materiales fundidos, gases y vapores. En los planetas rocosos de nuestro sistema solar se han encontrado evidencias de actividad volcánica, como en Mercurio, Venus, la Luna y Marte. No solo en la Tierra #DeimosPerú #roverchallenge #PUCP #roverchallenge2020 #marsrover #NASA https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ytcfShJuL/?igshid=1826tq2gyzzjp
El Sol, es el cuerpo celeste de mayor importancia para el ser humano, las plantas y los animales, al ser el único astro capaz de desprender luz propia en el Sistema Solar, y que resulta indispensable para el mantenimiento de la vida en nuestro planeta Tierra tal y como la conocemos. #DeimosPerú #roverchallenge #PUCP #roverchallenge2020 #marsrover #NASA https://www.instagram.com/p/B2sMdW9BD-q/?igshid=a8w2v3yawut
La luna en mira de Japón. La Agencia Espacial Japonesa (JAXA) firmó un acuerdo con Toyota para desarrollar un rover lunar; el mismo que sería lanzado a nuestro satélite en el 2029. El prototipo funcional estaría disponible para el 2022 pero sería probado en un lapso de 5 años antes de ser enviado a la luna. El objetivo de este proyecto es explorar las regiones polares del satélite para saber hasta qué punto sus recursos pueden ser usados. Además, se abriría la posibilidad de desarrollar la tecnología adecuada para investigar cuerpos celestes masivos. Este proyecto competiría directamente con la misión Artemisa de la NASA que planea el regreso a la luna por esas mismas fechas. #DeimosPerú #roverchallenge #PUCP #roverchallenge2020 #marsrover #NASA (en PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DEL PERU) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2p838Rh1J-/?igshid=ri02gs1utoqs
"Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty." • Brian Greene | #opportunityrover #marsrover #jpl #nasa (at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)