ASU team has its eyes on Thursday launch to send cameras to Mars
Arizona State University Professor Jim Bell has been a part of seven missions to Mars over more than 20 years, and each time the rocket engines fire up to launch a spacecraft, he feels a combination of joy and “super nervousness.”
This year, the 55-year-old planetary scientist and his team will watch the launch remotely from the university’s Tempe campus because the coronavirus pandemic has curtailed travel to the launch site at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. But he expects the familiar feelings on launch day won’t change.
“There’s a lot at stake,” said Bell, who is the principal investigator of
Mastcam-Z, a sophisticated camera system aboard the spacecraft.
An ASU team of about 20 scientists, engineers, graduate and undergraduate students at the university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration have spent more than seven years designing and testing two high-powered cameras aboard the unmanned spacecraft bound for Mars. They’re part of a larger Mars mission full of new experimental equipment.
The cameras are aboard a car-sized rover ready to launch with the help of an Atlas V-541 rocket. Launch is scheduled for 7:50 a.m. Eastern Time (4:50 a.m. Arizona time) on Thursday. Live coverage begins at 7 a.m. Arizona time on NASA’s website.
Here are eight things to know about the latest Mars mission:
1. A rover named Perseverance
Perseverance, a roving spacecraft on six aluminum wheels, is the mission’s centerpiece.
The 2,260-pound robot is the largest, heaviest and most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet.
NASA chose the rover’s name through a contest, with 13-year-old Alex Mather of Burke, Virginia, picking the winning name.
“We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars,” he wrote in his winning essay. “However, we can persevere. We, not as a nation but as humans, will not give up.”
NASA has sent four other rovers to Mars.
Perseverance is slightly longer and heavier than its predecessor, the Curiosity rover.
NASA’s first rover, Sojourner, in 1997 was about the size of a microwave oven and sent back more than 500 pictures of the rocky Martian surface. The next rovers, “twins” named Spirit and Opportunity, landed a couple weeks apart in 2004 and were the size of golf carts. Their discoveries included clues that Mars once had running water.
The Curiosity rover landed and 2012 and found evidence of a lake that billions of years ago could have supported microbial life. Curiosity is the only one of four rovers still operating.
2. A mini-helicopter on Mars?
Yes, you read that right. NASA will attempt to fly the first helicopter on another planet.
The thin Martian atmosphere means such a craft has to be super light with large, fast-spinning rotors.
“It’s not easy,” said MiMi Aung, helicopter project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at a recent news conference.
The helicopter, named Ingenuity, weighs in at only four pounds and is less than two feet tall. Powered by solar panels with lithium ion batteries, Ingenuity can fly up to 90 seconds at a stretch. Its rotors spin about eight times faster than a helicopter on Earth.
The $80 million helicopter is viewed as the “high risk-high reward” part of the mission with the first test flight scheduled for spring of 2021.
3. More cameras than any other mission
ASU’s Bell said Perseverance will be loaded with 23 cameras, the most for a Mars mission. Curiosity has 17.
Most of the cameras are for engineering purposes, to guide the robot across the surface and avoid obstacles.
ASU scientists will operate Mastcam-Z, a dual camera system with zoom capabilities and the ability to create 3D pictures and panoramas. Each camera is about the size of a can of tennis balls. The cameras are attached to the rover’s mast and, once on Mars, will be positioned about six feet off the ground. At maximum zoom, the cameras can recognize an object as small as an almond from across the length of a football field.
“We’ll really be able to zoom in on the world. Of course, the world will be Mars,” Bell said.
Each morning, the ASU research team will send commands to the spacecraft, which are relayed through NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Deep Space Network of radio antennas and beamed directly to the rover. The rover follows the commands, and at the end of each day the data get bundled up and sent back to Earth via NASA’s Martian orbiters, which serve as relay satellites. The images will get posted for viewing on the mission’s website.
4. What does Mars sound like?
Perseverance will be equipped with two microphones. One hopes to capture the sounds of the spacecraft landing; another is designed for detecting surface and rover sounds.
NASA outfitted two previous Mars spacecraft with microphones. Neither attempt was successful: The Mars Polar Lander crashed in 1999. The 2008 Phoenix
Mars Mission had a microphone on the descent camera, but it was never turned on because of technical difficulties.
5. Where will the rover go?
Perseverance is headed for a clayrich impact crater north of the Martian equator known as Jezero Crater.
Features seen from orbit like a wellpreserved river delta show that the 28mile-wide basin is thought to have contained water between three and four billion years ago, making it a prime spot to search for organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life.
How many miles Perseverance will travel is unknown, but NASA estimates between three and 12 miles.
6. Can the rover detect life?
Perseverance has science instruments that will help the team look for signs of habitable conditions and past microbial life.
Science equipment aboard Perseverance will look for organic matter and examine the chemical composition and texture of rocks and soil. The rover can also monitor weather conditions and dust.
The expectation is that any signs of life on Mars — if there ever was life on Mars — will probably be subtle, so the tools aboard the rover have to be especially sensitive.
The rover’s also equipped with a coring drill, capable of collecting samples and caching them for possible retrieval to Earth by a future mission. The samples will be stored in sealed containers about the size white board markers or cigar tubes. There are 43 tubes, and the Perseverance team will try to fill as many as they can.
7. How long will the Mars 2020 mission last?
The data and images from the Mars rovers are analyzed by scientists and used to make discoveries.
The Mars 2020 mission, funded by an estimated $2.5 billion or more from NASA, has an expected surface operation of at least a Mars year, which is a little longer than 2 Earth years. But rovers typically last longer than planned.
Spirit and Opportunity, twin rovers that landed in 2004, went far beyond their three-month missions. Spirit became trapped in sand and stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity lasted until 2018, hobbling along for two years after losing its front steering. NASA lost contact with Opportunity after a dust storm blanketed the planet and cut off communication.
8. How does the rover land on Mars?
A shell-like capsule protects Perseverance as it makes its seven-month journey to Mars.
As the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere, a parachute will inflate, helping to slow the craft. The parachute will separate from what’s known as the “descent vehicle,” which includes the rover and a rocket-powered structure that helps Perseverance land. NASA describes the descent vehicle as “like a jetpack with eight engines” that helps lower the rover on tethers to the surface.
Once the rover is on the ground, the tethers detach. The descent equipment flies off and crashes a few miles away on the surface. The landing is even tenser than launch for the thousands of scientists and engineers involved.
“We’ve landed eight times on Mars and hopefully this will be our ninth successful landing. We want to keep pushing envelope forward,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a recent news conference.