8:15 AM | *NASA's Mars rover mission off to a great start...see numerous new images...listen to the Martian wind...one highlight of the mission will be the deployment of a mini-helicopter*

An artist's impression of NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity. The "marscopter" landed with the rover on February 18th and soon make its first flight, the first powered flight on another world.  (Image credit: NASA)

Overview

NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance, successfully landed on the red planet last Thursday, February 18th and it will remain there for nearly two years searching for ancient life and exploring the surface.  There have already been several newly released images by NASA and you can actually listen to a ~10 mph wind on the red planet (see below). Perseverance is the most technologically advanced robot NASA has sent so far having traveled 293 million miles to reach the planet over the course of more than six months. One of the highlights of the mission will be the deployment of a 19 inch tall helicopter named “Ingenuity” which will become the first rotorcraft ever used beyond Earth.

A variety of rocks have been captured in this newly-released image from NASA with dark, light and “holey” rocks in the scene.

Details

The mission began in late July 2020 with an Atlas V rocket launch at Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida.  More than six months later, Perseverance landed successfully on Mars and will search for ancient life for nearly two years and explore the planet’s surface and collect dozens of samples.  Perseverance’s landing involved the “seven minutes of terror,” a fiery atmospheric entry in a protective capsule that involved a parachute-assisted descent. The “seven minutes of terror” is referred to by NASA engineers as the time it takes to enter the Martian atmosphere and descend to the surface. The landing on Thursday, February 18th was inside a 28-mile wide crater known as Jezero – an ancient delta that scientists think could hold concrete evidence of past life on Mars. While Mars is fairly dry today, evidence collected by previous Martian missions suggests the Red Planet was once a warm, wet planet with conditions similar to those on Earth today. This leads scientists to believe that Mars may have once been a habitable world during its early history.

This orbiter image shows the many parts of the Mars 2020 mission landing system that got the rover safely on the ground. Credit NASA

The SUV-sized Perseverance is designed to drive an average of 650 feet per Martian day and it features seven scientific instruments as well as a robotic arm that reaches about seven feet long and a rock drill.  Perseverance is nuclear powered using a plutonium generator provided by the US Department of Energy.  The spacecraft is guided solely by pre-programmed controls in its onboard computer, due to a roughly 11-minute signal delay between Earth and Mars. It will take some time to really get up and running for the rover as NASA will have many “infrastructure” tasks to complete in the next few months.  In the near term, NASA will stabilize the robot’s power, thermal and communication systems so that it is ready to switch over to new software which is already on board.  Other health checks are performed on instruments and the main battery will be charged.  While it may take a few months to get operating at full speed, the main camera will begin taking color panoramas in just a few days. 

A portion of a panorama captured by the Mastcam-Z camera system aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. The full panorama consists of 142 images taken on Feb. 21, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

Once Perseverance can get on the move, its first big trip will be to a Martian airfield and it’ll deploy a helicopter named Ingenuity which will become the first rotorcraft used beyond Earth. This little craft is only 19 inches tall and weighs just under 4 pounds. It has been tucked up in the belly of Perseverance since last summer.  During Ingenuity’s first flight, the craft will lift up, flying about 10 feet above the ground and hover there for about 20 or 30 seconds. This will be an interesting test as Mars' atmosphere is less than one percent the density of Earth’s, so it may be too thin for the helicopter to successfully fly. If it succeeds, then space agencies can add aerial exploration of Mars to future missions. The hope is that the helicopter preparation and test flights will be successfully completed in the spring and science work can start in earnest this summer. Ingenuity is powered through solar panels that charge up its lithium-ion batteries for one 90-second flight per Martian day. This entire mission will help prepare NASA for future human exploration on Mars which is currently on the books for the 2030s.

This was the first high-resolution, color image to be sent back by the Hazard Cameras on the underside of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover after its landing on Feb. 18, 2021. Video from landing chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing on the Red Planet, as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Full NASA video of landing

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover's entry, descent, and landing suite. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.

Click here (video courtesy NASA, YouTube).

This shows the rim of Jezero Crater as seen in the first 360-degree panorama taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU

Audio from Mars:

This set of sounds from the surface of Mars were recorded by the microphone on the side of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Feb. 20, 2021. In the first set, sounds from the rover itself dominate. In the second set, the sound was filtered to make sounds from Mars more audible. You can hear a little wind in the second set (estimated to be around 10 mph). This is the first time a Mars rover has been equipped with a microphone. (Recommend headphones)

Click here for audio with noise from the rover and the wind.

Click here for audio without noise from the rover (i.e., wind only).

For fabulous 4K video of prior Mars rover missions click here.

Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Perspecta, Inc.
perspectaweather.com

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