NASA rover faces ‘seven minutes of terror’ earlier than touchdown on Mars

When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside an area capsule, hits the ultimate stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it’s set to emit a radio alert because it streaks into the skinny Martian environment.
By the time that sign reaches mission managers some 127 million miles (204 million km) away on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) close to Los Angeles, Perseverance will have already got landed on the Red Planet – hopefully in a single piece.
The six-wheeled rover is predicted to take seven minutes to descend from the highest of the Martian environment to the planet’s floor in much less time than the 11-minute-plus radio transmission to Earth. Thus, Thursday’s ultimate, self-guided descent of the rover spacecraft is about to happen throughout a white-knuckled interval that JPL engineers affectionately seek advice from because the “seven minutes of terror.”
Al Chen, head of the JPL descent and touchdown workforce, referred to as it essentially the most important and most harmful a part of the $2.7 billion mission.
“Success is never assured,” Chen instructed a current information briefing. “And that’s especially true when we’re trying to land the biggest, heaviest and most complicated rover we’ve ever built to the most dangerous site we’ve ever attempted to land at.”
Much is driving on the end result. Building on discoveries of almost 20 U.S. outings to Mars relationship again to Mariner 4’s 1965 flyby, Perseverance could set the stage for scientists to conclusively present whether or not life has existed past Earth, whereas paving the best way for eventual human missions to the fourth planet from the solar. A secure touchdown, as all the time, comes first.
Success will hinge on a fancy sequence of occasions unfolding with no hitch – from inflation of an enormous, supersonic parachute to deployment of a jet-powered “sky crane” that can descend to a secure touchdown spot and hover above the floor whereas reducing the rover to the bottom on a tether.
“Perseverance has to do this all on her own,” Chen stated. “We can’t help it during this period.”
If all goes as deliberate, NASA’s workforce would obtain a follow-up radio sign shortly earlier than 1 p.m. Pacific time confirming that Perseverance landed on Martian soil on the fringe of an historic, long-vanished river delta and lake mattress.
SCIENCE ON THE SURFACE
From there, the nuclear battery-powered rover, roughly the scale of a small SUV, will embark on the first goal of its two-year mission – participating a fancy suite of devices within the seek for indicators of microbial life which will have flourished on Mars billions of years in the past.
Advanced energy instruments will drill samples from Martian rock and seal them into cigar-sized tubes for eventual return to Earth for additional evaluation – the primary such specimens ever collected by humankind from the floor of one other planet.
Two future missions to retrieve these samples and fly them again to Earth are within the planning phases by NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency.
Perseverance, the fifth and by far most subtle rover automobile NASA has despatched to Mars since Sojourner in 1997, additionally incorporates a number of pioneering options in a roundabout way associated to astrobiology.
Among them is a small drone helicopter, nicknamed Ingenuity, that can check surface-to-surface powered flight on one other world for the primary time. If profitable, the four-pound (1.8-kg) whirlybird may pave the best way for low-altitude aerial surveillance of Mars throughout later missions.
Another experiment is a tool to extract pure oxygen from carbon dioxide within the Martian environment, a instrument that would show invaluable for future human life assist on Mars and for producing rocket propellant to fly astronauts dwelling.
‘SPECTACULAR’ BUT TREACHEROUS
The mission’s first hurdle after a 293-million-mile (472-million-km) flight from Earth is delivering the rover intact to the ground of Jerezo Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-km-wide) expanse that scientists imagine could harbor a wealthy trove of fossilized microorganisms.
“It is a spectacular landing site,” challenge scientist Ken Farley instructed reporters on a teleconference.
What makes the crater’s rugged terrain – deeply carved by long-vanished flows of liquid water – so tantalizing as a analysis website additionally makes it treacherous as a touchdown zone.
The descent sequence, an improve from NASA’s final rover mission in 2012, begins as Perseverance, encased in a protecting shell, pierces the Martian environment at 12,000 miles per hour (19,300 km per hour), almost 16 occasions the velocity of sound on Earth.
After a parachute deployment to gradual its plunge, the descent capsule’s warmth defend is about to fall away to launch a jet-propelled “sky crane” hovercraft with the rover connected to its stomach.
Once the parachute is jettisoned, the sky crane’s jet thrusters are set to instantly hearth, slowing its descent to strolling velocity because it nears the crater ground and self-navigates to a clean touchdown website, steering away from boulders, cliffs and sand dunes.
Hovering over the floor, the sky crane is because of decrease Perseverance on nylon tethers, sever the chords when the rover’s wheels attain the floor, then fly off to crash a secure distance away.
Should all the pieces work, deputy challenge supervisor Matthew Wallace stated, post-landing exuberance could be on full show at JPL regardless of COVID-19 security protocols which have saved shut contacts inside mission management to a minimal.

“I don’t think COVID is going to be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist-bumping,” Wallace stated.