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NASA’s Perseverance rover is now halfway to Mars, having flown 146 million miles (235 million km).
Although the spacecraft has traveled half the distance it needs to land on Mars, it is not perfectly between Earth and Mars as the journey between two planets does not take a straight line.
Instead, the rover is located approximately 26.6 million miles (42.7 million km) in front of the Earth and approximately 17.9 million miles (28.8 million km) from Mars.
The probe is approaching Mars and will arrive in February. Pic: NASA
Perseverance is expected to break into the Martian atmosphere at 11,900 mph (19,000 km / h) on February 18 next year.
It currently takes two minutes and 22 seconds for transmissions from Earth to reach the spacecraft, but when it reaches Mars, those same transmissions will take 11.5 minutes.
This is less than the time between Perseverance entering the Martian atmosphere and landing.
By the time mission control sees what is happening, the rover will either have already landed or been destroyed, as most of the Mars landing attempts have ended.
NASA hopes its new guidance and parachute activation technology will help steer the rover away from these dangers, but its controllers on Earth will be helpless.
After traveling more than 290 million miles (470 million km), the rover, which has a mass of 1,050 kg (2,313 lb), could simply add to the craters on the planet’s red surface.
But if all goes to plan, Perseverance will land in an ancient river delta and a former lake on the Martian surface known as the Jezero Crater.
NASA has announced that the rover will land in Jezero Crater. Pic: NASA
Jezero Crater is filled with obstacles and dangers for the rover, including boulders, cliffs, sand dunes, and depressions, which could end the mission, either on landing or as the rover drives along the surface.
Deposits in the crater are rich in clay minerals, which form in the presence of water, meaning that life may have existed once there – and such sediments on Earth are known to store microscopic fossils.
Scientists also noted that the crater does not have a depth to match its diameter, meaning sediments likely entered the crater through running water – potentially up to a kilometer of it – which will offer rich insights into signs. of ancient life.
NASA says that verifying ancient life on Mars carries a huge burden of proof.
While the remnants of microbial life on Mars may have left telltale marks in the sediment layers that Perseverance will analyze, it may be difficult to analyze them on the planet itself.
After drilling through the best rocks, the rover will store around half a kilogram of rock sample in dozens of titanium tubes that will be collected by another rover in about a decade.
NASA and the European Space Agency are planning a Mars sample return campaign, during which these samples can be examined with instruments that are too large and complex to be sent to Mars.
A miniature helicopter is also sent to Mars
Perseverance is also gifted with a miniature helicopter called Ingenuity which weighs only 4 pounds (1.8 kg) and will be the first aircraft to fly to another planet.
“The laws of physics might say it’s nearly impossible to fly to Mars, but actually flying a heavier-than-air vehicle to the red planet is a lot harder than that,” the space agency joked.
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