Celebrating the Mars touchdown
Scientists continue search for signs of life on planet as NASA rover lands
After completing a monthslong journey of nearly 300 million miles, millions were able to see NASA’s Perseverance rover land on Mars on Thursday — something Lara Bates said could promote research to allow humans to eventually venture to the planet.
Bates, the Executive Director of the Challenger Learning Center of Northwest Indiana, said in collaboration with the European Space Agency around 2031, potential samples collected by the rover after it’s touchdown to the Jezero Crater on Mars could assist in an eventual human trip to the planet in the future.
“NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance landing is important because this will be the first to search for signs of ancient life on Mars while utilizing new technologies that have been approved upon from previous missions,” Bates said. “The rover has the capability to collect and store several dozen samples that in turn will come back to Earth for further research.”
In a livestream of the NASA Mission Control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, viewers were able to witness and see team members witnessing the rover land on the surface of the Red Planet in real time. The room erupted in applause and cheers as the rover descended in a plasma fireball through the Mars atmosphere, slowing down from about 12,000 mph to zero in just seven minutes. The seven minutes spent waiting were expected to be high-stress, said Briony Horgan, Purdue University associate professor of planetary science in West Lafayette, and have been deemed the “seven minutes of terror.”
The Jezero Crater is the most dangerous site NASA has ever tried to land a rover, but the entry and touchdown were handled entirely by Perseverance’s onboard technologies, meaning those on earthbound team could only watch and hope.
Horgan provided research and a presentation to assist NASA in the selection of the Perseverance landing site, and was on the rover camera team deemed the scientific eyes for the rover.
“The Perseverance rover, it’s really what we’ve been working on at NASA for decades, we’ve been building up to it,” Horgan said. “NASA’s biggest question, and really one of the biggest scientific questions we can ask, is are we alone in the universe? This is NASA’s big shot at trying to answer that question — we’re looking for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, and we think that’s probably the easiest way to tell if there is other life in the universe, by looking at the nearest planet that we think used to be Earthlike for signs of Earthlike life.”
Bates said she believed the landing wait would be “terror” for programmers involved as they awaited the outcome of their work with the rover, as they could not assist it in real time as it makes its land — hence the nickname “seven minutes of terror.”
“I’m sure there is an unbelievable amount of stress and anxiety for all those involved with getting Perseverance safely in Jezero crater,” Bates said. “And all of those that will be tuning in will be on the edge of their seats waiting for touchdown confirmation. Since Perseverance will be moving so fast
in real-time to land, humans cannot control the process due to the delay (from Earth).”
The rover is the biggest, heaviest, cleanest and most sophisticated six-wheeled robot to be launched into space, according to NASA. It will search the Jezero Crater for signs of ancient life and collect samples to be returned to Earth.
The site of the rover landing is a geology wonderland, Horgan said, noting scientists around the world worked together on “Mars time,” almost 50 years after the first rover casualty at Mars, in order to get Perseverance to touch down on the planet.
“These kinds of missions are so exciting, because they incorporate people from all over the county working together,” Horgan said. “We’re all going to be working from our homes, working on Mars time, to get this mission up and running. … I think this is really what NASA is all about — getting everybody across the country as involved as possible in space exploration.”
The rover has been decades in the making, but was constructed over the last eight years. After the rover’s landing Thursday, NASA received a black and white grainy image of the surface, but Horgan said the hope is that over the span of a few days, more will be received.
“We’re really excited at this new opportunity to answer those really big questions,” Horgan said. “We’re psyched to get our first images back from Mars. We’ll get some early, grainy images back hopefully right after landing, but we’ll get our first really beautiful images back a few days later, and hopefully we’ll get some fantastic shots of beautiful geology … we’re really excited to get those first glimpses of a new place on an alien planet.”