Last Dec. 27, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California hosted an event for media to present the next step in their mission to Mars.
The media were allowed access to NASA's Spacecraft Assembly Facility cleanroom and see for themselves the rover, descent stage, and cruise stage components. The highlight of the event, of course, was NASA's next-generation Mars rover, simply named Mars 2020. The rover is the most ambitious and most technologically advanced platform NASA has made up to today. Its mission is to search for evidence that life once existed on the Red Planet.
"Mars 2020 is looking for signs of ancient life," says Zach Ousnamer, one of the mechanical engineers involved in the Mars 2020 Rover Project. "We're going to land in the Jezero Crater, which is an ancient river delta, and here on Earth, we know those are hot spots for life. So we're going to go to one on Mars in hopes of finding life there."
The Mars 2020 rover is an improvement over NASA's previous Mars rover, Curiosity.
The Mars 2020 Rover
"We're flying seven new instruments. Some of them are similar to those flown on Curiosity but upgraded. We have, for instance, a new instrument MOXIE, which is generating oxygen on the surface of Mars." Ousnamer says, adding that there are other tools on the rovers such as the "SuperCam on the top of the head of the remote sensing mast, doing laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy,"
However, the highlight of the tools of the Mars 2020 rover is the Adaptive Caching Assembly. According to Ousnamer, it can be described as a Swiss watch of tools. What it does is that it "takes samples of Mars, puts them in a canister, hermetically seals them, and leaves those on the surface in the hope that in a future mission, we can bring them back to study here on Earth."
Terrors of the Descent
Ray Baker, Flight System Manager for Mars 2020, also described the importance and role of the Descent Stage.
"So that the descent stage is the power of our vehicle during the EDL, it provides all of the guidance and propulsion that is needed to get the surface. It also has instruments that help us fly. It has an inertial measurement unit. It has an antenna, a radar, in the front so that we can actually see the ground and measure our velocity and altitude," Baker says
He also adds how the entry into Mars itself is a terrifying scenario.
"It's very complicated. It's been called the seven minutes of terror for a reason. It's a long string of events where we go from about 12,000 miles per hour when we hit the atmosphere down to about two miles per hour on touchdown. And Everything has to work. There are many many many systems. Basically, the whole spacecraft has to work together for virtually the first time perfectly. "
With the Mars 2020 rover now completed, it'll be sent to Florida, where it'll be undertaking more testing before it is launched off. NASA expects the mission launch sometime between July 17 and Aug. 5 and expect the mission to reach Mars orbit in 2021.
