NASA will rush to complete Mars launch

/anding a spacecraft on Mars is hard enough. Doing it during a global pandemic makes the hair raising task – “terror´ is a word often associated with Mars landings – even more difficult. But NASA is pushing ahead with its plans to send a rover to Mars, and remains on track to launch the spacecraft next month from Cape Canaveral, of ficials said Wednesday.

Then again, NASA is facing a tight deadline.

Mars and Earth are only on the same side of the sun every 26 months, meaning NASA has a limited window to launch the spacecraft to the Red Planet. Storing the spacecraft and wait ing another two years for the next opportunity could have cost “half a billion dollars,´ NASA Administrator -im Bridenstine said during a press briefing Wednesday, so the space agency made the mission a high priority, despite the coronavirus pandem ic.

Despite the difficulties of working amid the virus, officials said they have made significant progress on what they called one of the most ambitious and signif icant robotic programs the space agency has tackled in years.

Dubbed “Perseverance,´ the S8V sized rover would embark on a 2. billion exploration mission to search for ancient signs of life on Mars, and be gin the first leg of an attempt to bring samples from the Red Planet back to Earth. Over the course of a mission that is ex pected to last some two years on the surface, the rover would also study the planet’s climate and geology and help pave the way for human exploration, NASA said.

The spacecraft also will be carrying a small helicopter, called “,ngenuity,´ which would become the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet.

,f all goes well, the space craft would lift off on an Atlas V rocket from the )lorida Space Coast on -uly 20 and land on Mars on )eb. 1 , 2021. )or the landing site, NASA has chosen a crater called -ezero, the site of an ancient lake as well as a delta, where there are rocks that date back billion years. Perse verance is expected to scour the area, drilling for samples and signs of habitable conditions and even signs of ancient micro bial life.

“The rover will study the re cord that is preserved in layers of rock on the surface of Mars ... that could have proved evidence of the chemical building blocks of life,´ said /ori Glaze, the di rector of NASA’s planetary sci ence division.

The rover would stockpile the samples on the Martian sur face, to be picked up on a subse Tuent mission, to launch to Mars in 2026, for return to Earth. That would be a first, Glaze said.

Scientists have studied sam ples of meteorites that have come from Mars, but “it’s not the same as getting an actual sample of pristine Mars rock and soil to study,´ she said. “And