Namaste guys, welcome back to Rest in Space.
How are you all doing?
As you already know today’s topic is the
Mission Overview of the Mars Mission 2020
Mars has been explored by various Probes sent
from Earth since the early 20th century and
has yielded a large increase in knowledge
about the Martian system, focused primarily
on understanding its geology and habitability potential.
While there were a number of Probes , satellites
, reconnaissance orbiters and what not, that
were sent to the Martian orbit, but our focus
today is on the rovers
On July 4th 1997 Mars Pathfinder carrying
the “Sojourner” rover was the first successful
rover to wheel down on the martian surface.
A little piece of history here , which is
that the Soviets were the first to land on
Mars , their lander transmitted data for 20
seconds before it caught up with a dust storm
. Since the Soviets did not know how the surface
of Mars looked like, they had skis instead
of wheels.
Now coming back to the topic , Sojourner which
was intended to last 7 sols actually lasted
nearly 83 sols which is 85 earth days.  It
had an Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer through
which a lot about soil composition and the
dynamics of the martian surface was studied.
Next we had the “Spirit” or the Mars Exploration
Rover which was active from 2004 to 2010.
It’s main objective in a nutshell was to
find the potential of water residue on surface
and in the rocks. It was on of the longest
performing rovers on Mars , roaming the surface
for 5 and a half years, before it caught up
in a soft sand and couldn’t get itself out
And 3 months after Spirit had landed we had
the Opportunity rover touching down on Mars.
This was a bit more equipped than the previous
rovers. It had rechargeable batteries and
would go into “hibernation mode” in the
event of dust storms resulting in a 14 year
life span. This rover again like its previous
twin , the Spirit, was made to study the environmental
aspects and rock compositions that could have
potentially had water. In 2018 the final set
of commands were given to the rover as it
had been suffering from “Amnesia” which
actually meant it was unable to read and write
commands and resulted in resetting the entire system.
In 2011, the largest interplanetary payload
ever delivered to a planet which was 5 times
larger than the previous rovers, the Curiosity
rover, set out to find whether Mars was “habitable”
or not and whether or not it had any past
microbial life.
The interesting aspect of this was the the
complex 3 stage landing system .
After a 8 and a half month journey towards
Mars , it entered the Martian atmosphere , travelling
at a speed of 13,000 miles per hour and in
a 7 min span Ground control would lose communications
with the lander and only after those 7 mins
, which the scientists called “Seven Minutes
of Terror” , would they know whether it
landed safely or if it crashed into pieces
The martian atmosphere is not thick enough
to slow the spacecraft down so the lander
had the largest supersonic parachute ever
designed , weighing less than 100 pounds,
it was capable of handling 6500 pounds of
force. Added to that, the third stage involved
a powered descent using the retro thrusters
which was used by the lander to position itself
to the landing target.
Coming close to the surface the thrusters
would kick up dust harming the instruments
of the rover so a “sky crane manoeuvre”
was installed which lowered the rover down
from a height and then went on to crash at
a safe distance . And such was the complexity
that was achieved
And now coming to 2020, NASA sent up the perseverance
rover along with a drone for the first time
called Ingenuity .
its been sent to
find signs of “previous life” and bio-signatures
indicating whether Mars is habitable or not
. Its coupled with Ingenuity helicopter , which
will scout the areas which are potential for
perseverance to go and examine . Aerial scout
will be the first of its nature.
Launched aboard Atlas V-541 , one of the largest
available rockets for interplanetary exploration
, here’s an insight of how it was made.
Have a look
Well that’s the end of the report on today’s
Mission Overview ,I would like to leave you
guys with a thought, though countless missions
have been sent to Mars to find signs of life,
there has been certain unexplained findings
that are really gripping. I wouldn’t go
in depth into it in this video but do let
me know in the comment section if you guys
want to know more about these findings and
also on how these Mars missions actually work
from a theoretical perspective .
Thanks for your time , drop in a thumbs up
if you liked the video and do subscribe to
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on Space Technology .
have a good day.
This is RIS Mission Control over and out
