Looking for Life on Mars

Looking for Life on Mars

Looking for Life on Mars: Follow along as NASA launches the Mars 2020 Mission, perhaps the most ambitious hunt yet for signs of ancient life on Mars.


 

 



The spacecraft will blaze into the Martian atmosphere at some 12,000 miles per hour and attempt to lower the Perseverance Rover in the rocky Jezero Crater, home to a dried-up river delta scientists think could have harbored life. Perseverance will comb the area for signs of life and collect samples for possible return to Earth. Traveling onboard is a four-pound helicopter that will conduct a series of test flights—the first on another planet.

During its journey, Perseverance will also test technology designed to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, in hopes that the gas could be used for fuel—or for humans to breathe—on future missions.

 

Looking for Life on Mars

 

Mars 2020

Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover Perseverance and the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity. Mars 2020 was launched from Earth on an Atlas V launch vehicle at 11:50:00 UTC on 30 July 2020, and confirmation of touch down in Jezero crater on Mars was received at 20:55 UTC on 18 February 2021. As of 28 February 2021, Perseverance has been on Mars for 9 sols (10 total days; 10 days).

Perseverance will investigate an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. The Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA on 4 December 2012 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Perseverance’s design is derived from the rover Curiosity, and it uses many components already fabricated and tested in addition to new scientific instruments and a core drill. The rover also employs 19 cameras and two microphones, allowing for audio recording of the Martian environment.

The launch of Mars 2020 was the third of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of the United Arab Emirates (the Emirates Mars Mission with the orbiter Hope on 19 July) and China (the Tianwen-1 mission on 23 July, with an orbiter, lander, and rover).

Perseverance

Perseverance is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the crater Jezero on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. It was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on 30 July 2020 at 11:50 UTC. Confirmation that the rover successfully landed on Mars was received on 18 February 2021 at 20:55 UTC. As of 28 February 2021, Perseverance has been on Mars for 9 sols (10 Earth days).

Perseverance has a similar design to its predecessor rover, Curiosity, from which it was moderately upgraded. It carries seven primary payload instruments, 19 cameras, and two microphones. The rover is also carrying the mini-helicopter Ingenuity, an experimental aircraft that will attempt the first powered flight on another planet.

The rover’s goals include identifying ancient Martian environments capable of supporting life, seeking out evidence of former microbial life existing in those environments, collecting rock and soil samples to store on the Martian surface, and testing oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere to prepare for future crewed missions.

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