On Friday, NASA celebrates one year of successful operation of its most technically advanced Martian explorer, the Perseverance rover — and its Ingenuity helicopter companion.
Halfway through its journey, the robotic roaming science lab is racing against the clock to collect possible evidence of ancient life on the red planet.
Year One milestones
Within its planned mission duration of one Martian year, or about two Earth years, the Perseverance rover is tasked with collecting samples of the Martian surface that will eventually be returned to Earth to search for evidence of ancient microbial life that might have once existed on the now dry and dusty planet.
“Perseverance is very much on a mission to gather a certain number of samples in a certain amount of time. And then, be able to put those down so hopefully, the future Mars Sample Return mission can pick them up,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance Deputy Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “And so, that does put the time pressure on us to continue to make progress,” he continued.
Although successful, Perseverance’s landing one year ago put it in a region of Mar’s Jezero Crater that was safer for the rover — the flat floor of the crater, a once suspected lakebed — but further away from the area scientists are most interested in exploring.
The rover was about three miles away from where the Perseverance science team expects to find the most substantial evidence of ancient microbial life, a river delta that has the potential of being loaded with evidence of Mar’s wet past.
The location offered opportunities to search for a different type of sample than would be found at the delta location. That plan has gone successfully, for the most part.
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The science team “allocated the first year to sort of drive around and get samples on the crater floor,” said Welch. It was a “unique opportunity to really study the material that makes up the crater floor,” he continued.
Welch explains that at the end of its first year of sample collecting Perseverance now has “six core samples on board. And we’re hoping by the end of the month to get another two samples. That would sort of complete the suite of samples we wanted to get from the crater floor.”
A year of perseverance and ingenuity
Troubleshooting a few unexpected events along the way — from disappearing core samples to inconveniently stuck pebbles — ate up some of the precious mission timeline and is part of the reason why Perseverance is now racing to complete its sample collection mission within the two year mission window.
The first sample of rock that Perseverance’s science team attempted to collect mysteriously vanished. “That first sample, it was a head-scratcher,” said Welch.
It turns out the first rock was too brittle. As the drill collected the sample, the rock essentially turned to dust leaving the sample chamber empty. “It’s the great thing of interacting with the natural terrain of a surface of another planet, right? It’s always going to surprise you,” said Welch.
None of the experiments that the team conducted here on Earth prior to sending Perseverance on its interplanetary adventure predicted that a sample could mysteriously disappear or leave pebbles behind to be stuck in the collection chamber.
The science team eventually found rocks here on Earth that produced the same results when drilled into allowing them to move on to better candidate rocks to drill into on Mars.
And through a series of careful shakes, rattles, and a little bit of creative driving they were able to dislodge the pesky stuck pebbles.
“It was a very careful process that we went through when we saw the pebbles there. Everybody’s like, Well, okay, now we got to get rid of them. We took our time and it was almost a month by the time we went through the process,” said Welch.
What’s on deck for Year Two?
At its one-year anniversary, Perseverance is now embarking on its return trip to its landing site. It will then “drive over to the delta and spend about another year on the delta gathering samples there,” explained Welch.
“Being able to get the best sample compliment we can from a variety of different rocks…it’s going to sure reveal new and interesting information,” he continued.
Accompanying Perseverance is NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter which so far has surpassed all of its mission objectives.
Initially intended only as a demonstration of technology and expected to attempt just 5 flights, it has now successfully demonstrated powered, controlled flight on the surface of another planet 19 times logging about 35 minutes of total flight time.
“We’ve actually used it to go to places to scout out for science where the rover wasn’t able to drive. So this is really adding to the scientific value of the mission and helping scientists make decisions on where we might want to go next,” Welch explained. “We’re hoping that it’s going to continue to live to get all the way over to the delta,” he continued.
Visiting two different locations and collecting core samples of the Martian surface in pairs enables the best possible opportunity to determine if Mars once sustained life.
The idea is to continue to collect core samples in pairs and potentially create two different drop location opportunities. “We could put down another cache that has all the stuff collected in the crater, as well as, the new stuff we collected outside of the crater and potentially that would even be a better cache for the Mars Sample Return (mission),” explained Welch.
This will enable the Mars Sample Return mission, currently targeted to happen sometime in the early 2030s, to pick the best location to collect the diverse samples rather than forcing a pre-determined landing location.
Ultimately, NASA hopes that Perseverance and the Mars Sample Return mission will offer up undeniable evidence that large bodies of water full of life once spanned the now barren planet.
Welch explained that Perseverance and Ingenuity are in the exact right place to do just that, “the sedimentary rock laid down through the water flowing in there is a great potential source of where life may have found root and habitable environments. If there’s signs of life, that would be awesome.”
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