NASA’s next Mars rover, Perseverance, has an ambitious mission.
We know from decades of Mars missions that the Red Planet not only had water in its ancient
past, but that water could have supported
life.
Mars is our neighboring planet and in many ways, the most similar to us and certainly
in its history.
And the question whether ancient life was
there is still the question that keeps us
up at night.
In search of an answer, NASA is sending a
rover the size of an SUV to an ancient lakebed
on Mars called Jezero Crater.
Equipped with durable custom-built wheels, two robotic arms and a whole suite of science
instruments both inside and out, Perseverance will rove across the surface of Mars in search
of evidence that ancient life might have existed in the past.
So the Mars 2020 rover will be seeking signs of ancient life in the ancient rocks of Mars
to look for things that we call biosignatures, which are signs that ancient life might have
been there in the past.
But that’s not all this determined rover
will accomplish.
Mars 2020 is really the essential first part
of a sample return mission, which is to bring
samples back to the best labs we have, which are here on Earth.
Perseverance will drill into Martian rocks,
collect samples and prepare them for a future
mission to pick them up and bring them back to Earth.
This is something that’s never been done
before.
So Mars 2020 is the first half of a return
trip.
To get to the most interesting rocks on Mars, Perseverance has to land safely among crevasses,
craters and canyons.
NASA engineers designed a new terrain-relative navigation system, allowing the rover to autonomously
divert from known risks in the area while
targeting a smaller landing zone than ever
before.
It means that we can maybe both go to places that are more interesting to the scientists
because we’re able to handle places with
more hazards, as well as land closer to the
things that they’re interested in off the
bat.
So we get to the science that they care about and more quickly.
So we can get to the most exciting places, which are often the most challenging.
Building on the discoveries of orbiters, landers and rovers before it, Perseverance is pivotal
in our search for life beyond Earth.
That could finally answer the age-old question, are we alone?
