Life on Mars? Here’s what to know about NASA’s rover searching for ancient creatures
NASA proved a robot could roam the Red Planet in 1997 with a rover the size of a microwave oven. In 2004, scientists learned Mars was once home to running water before it became a frozen desert.
Eight years later, a rover revealed one of its craters hosted a lake capable of sustaining life billions of years ago. Now, the latest scientific development, coined Perseverance, is destined to find the ancient life that once lived on the icy planet.
The rover, launched July 30 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is set to complete the first mission in history to collect samples from another planet and return them to Earth. That will help NASA scientists learn more about Mars’ temperature, wind speed, pressure, humidity, geology and dust size and shape.
The long-term goal? Learn how to safely send humans to the Red Planet.
Carrying seven different scientific instruments, Perseverance is the largest and heaviest robotic Mars rover NASA has built and is expected to land Feb. 18, 2021, according to the agency. It will spend at least one Mars year, or about two Earth years, searching for signs of life.
The car-sized robot will also carry a solar-powered helicopter named Ingenuity, designed to withstand Mars’ “bone-chilling temperatures” and low density atmosphere, NASA said. It will be the first aircraft ever to test controlled flight on another planet.
Here’s what else to know about mission “Mars 2020.”
Where is Perseverance landing? Why does that matter?
The rover will land in a 28-mile wide crater called the Jezero Crater north of the Martian equator, NASA said.
Past explorations of the Red Planet revealed there may have been a river that flowed into a “body of water the size of Lake Tahoe” in that region about 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.
NASA scientists believe the ancient river could have deposited and preserved sediments carrying organic molecules — a potential sign of microbial life.
Technology on board could help humans visit Mars
One piece of technology on board will perform a “proof-of-concept experiment” that will use carbon dioxide from Mars’ atmosphere to produce oxygen. The oxygen could then be used by future astronauts to breathe or burn rocket fuel to return to Earth, according to NASA.
The rover also has technology that can help it travel quickly and autonomously, allowing it to cover more ground without having to wait for commands from Earth.
Instruments that will collect data on climate and the nature of the dust on Mars’ surface will also inform humans how to safely explore and enter the planet.
Where did the name Perseverance come from?
In a “Name the Rover” contest, 28,000 people submitted essays explaining what word or set of words they thought should represent the new mission.
The winner, Alex Mather of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Virginia, wrote, “We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere. We, not as a nation but as humans, will not give up.”
NASA said the name was fitting because of the work put into the mission and the events leading up to it. The coronavirus pandemic “required creative problem solving and teamwork,” not to mention early technological work started a decade ago, years before the project was announced in 2012.
Perseverance was built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Perseverance carries more cameras than any other rover
The Mars 2020 rover carries 23 cameras capable of taking high-definition images, according to NASA, more than any other mission.
What’s more, the rover carries the words “Explore as one” on a plate in Morse code, as well as the names of about 10.9 million people on three silicon chips “who signed up to ride along on Perseverance’s journey to Mars.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Life on Mars? Here’s what to know about NASA’s rover searching for ancient creatures."
