NASA is gearing up for “seven terrible minutes” over Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover is about to arrive on the red planet. And so nail biting can begin.

After flying nearly 470 million kilometers through interplanetary space, NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars is almost over. The promising rover is expected to set foot on February 18. But to reach the surface of the red planet in one piece, perhaps the most exciting challenge yet awaits: the so-called ‘seven minutes of terror’.

Seven minutes of terror
Landing on a planet far from here is, as you can imagine, extremely difficult. There are only a few minutes between the time a spacecraft enters the thin atmosphere of Mars and lands on the red planet. And in those minutes the spacecraft has to be slowed down enormously to prevent it from crashing on the surface of Mars. Although NASA has already parked several rovers on Mars, it continues to look forward to these ‘seven minutes of terror’ with fear and trembling.

Those involved talk about the nerve-racking seven minutes of terror.

Landing
On landing, the rover dives at a hasty 20,000 kilometers per hour through the thin Martian atmosphere. An immense parachute should slow down the rover as much as possible so that it lands smoothly on the surface. The rover performs each individual step autonomously (check out the cool animation below). It promises to be quite a challenge. “If there’s one thing we know, it’s that landing on Mars is never easy,” said NASA’s Marc Etkind. “But as NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance has an extraordinary technical pedigree and mission team.”

Once on Mars, the rover will be there an important task wait: the rover will search rocks for traces of microbes that may have roamed the red planet in a gray past. Because where previous Mars rovers looked for evidence that Mars could once have been habitable, they were unable to actually detect life. That must now change. Perseverance is equipped with a series of new scientific instruments that make it possible to find extraterrestrial life. So the rover will actually look for traces of past microbial life.

Monsters
But the robber will not only look for traces of life. NASA also wants to collect various Mars samples during the mission. After the rover collects a drill core, it is analyzed on board and packed and temporarily stored in the rover’s abdomen. When the time is right – and a suitable location has been found – the carefully packed samples will be placed on the surface of Mars so that they can be collected during future space missions and taken to Earth, where they can be examined more closely.

Jerezo-crater
Perseverance’s field of work is called Crater Lake. This is a 45 kilometer area just north of the Martian equator. Researchers believe that about 3.5 billion years ago, the Jezero crater was filled with water carried by rivers to the crater. The ‘arms’ of this delta can still be seen on the crater floor and were captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Scientists suspect that the rivers flowing in and out of the lake contained organic molecules, other potential signs of microbial life, or even microorganisms. Traces of this may still be stored in deposits of the river delta or in the sediments of the lake. The Jezero crater is therefore one of the oldest and scientifically one of the most interesting landscapes that Mars has to offer.

Curiosity
Perseverance is about the size of a small car and has a mass of 1025 kilograms. It means that Perseverance is similar in size to Curiosity, but clearly stands out from its immediate predecessor. For example, the rover has been given more robust wheels. This can of course be traced back to the considerable wear and tear that Curiosity wheels have had to endure in recent years. In addition, the rover has a completely different system for sampling the surface of Mars. The software on board Mars 2020 is also different. This software makes Mars 2020 a lot more autonomous than Curiosity. It is expected that the rover will be able to cover much greater distances without having to make contact with the control room on Earth in the meantime. The rover can also use its energy more efficiently thanks to this software.

All in all, it promises to be a wonderful mission. Because in addition to the goals mentioned above, there will also be a real one Marshelikopter be released on the red planet. Experiments are also being carried out on a technology that is aimed at converting CO2 – which is abundantly present in the Martian atmosphere – into oxygen. Perseverance is also equipped with different materials that future space suits will be made ofso that scientists can see in practice which materials are most suitable for the red planet. It means that Perseverance’s mission will provide us with an enormous amount of knowledge; a first step towards the colonization of Mars.

But we are not that far yet. At the moment, Perseverance is still racing through space and will soon be the third – after the Arab Hope Probe and the Chinese Tianwen-1 – to arrive on Mars. So the nail biting can almost begin… Curious about the exciting landing of Perseverance? “We are delighted to invite the whole world to share this exciting event with us!” Etkind said. NASA offers the public many ways to participate and stay informed about the landing and the highlights of the mission. Follow NASA on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, for example. In addition, the landing of Perseverance can also be followed live via NASA TV. The livestream starts on February 18, 8:15 PM Dutch time.

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