Perseverance Mars Rover Launching in July
July 2020 :
The Earth is really fortunate that it and Mars come together about every two years, close enough to be able to send space craft up to our neighbor in a fairly quick time frame. The Earth is really unfortunate that it and Mars only come together about every two years, as, if the window of opportunity isn’t met, it’s another whole cycle to wait.
Right now, the latest Martian lander, Perseverance, is waiting for its opportunity to join Curiosity in doing its best to help us understand as much about Mars as possible. If all works perfectly, it will be setting down at an ancient lake, in the crater Jezero, home to rocks that apparently date back four billion years. It is planned to study the area, drill for samples, and hopefully come up with the possibility of determining whether life, at least microscopic, could have existed in this region.
Many of us can remember the “seven minutes of terror,” waiting for the totally original landing attempt of the Curiosity; this time, with Curiosity in the back of everyone’s minds, Perseverance’s landing will be much less breath holding. Also, its landing will be recorded, for all to see just several minutes after the fact.
One of the major features on the craft is its ability to drill into the surface of Mars, creating samples of the various layering, then “saving” them for a future mission, scheduled for 2026, which will retrieve them, and eventually have them come to Earth. Other than the various Martian meteorites discovered on Earth, this will be an actual, pristine set of samples, something never attempted before. In addition, Perseverance will have a hitchhiker on it, Ingenuity, a miniature helicopter, capable of scouting the surface around the lander.
All the craft needs is the ability to be launched within the window of opportunity. This time frame begins in just a few weeks, beginning July 20th, and lasting until early August. If this time doesn’t allow for Perseverance to leave Earth, we will have to wait another two years for this opportunity to come again.
This artist concept shows the Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, which will travel with NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build and manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agencys headquarters in Washington.
For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.
