National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) tested its Mars Perseverance Rover through the harsh fire, ice, light, and sound tests that are tougher than the environment it will face once it lands on Mars, experts claimed.
According to NASA Science Mars Exploration Program's latest report, the space agency only built one space vehicle for Mars compared to 92 million motor vehicles which were built by many auto manufacturers in 2019.
NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover is one of a kind, and the needed tests to prepare it for its journey on the harsh environment of the Red Planet are also different from other tests previously conducted by the space agency.
The team of researchers needed to build a space vehicle that can survive for years on an environment that has punishing constant radiation, ever-present dust, and temperature shifts since the hardware cannot be repaired or fixed once it is damaged during its exploration on Mars.
NASA has put Perseverance through a trial program tougher than the trip it will face going to Mars and the environment it will encounter once it lands to ensure the mission's readiness and safety.
"Mars is hard, and everybody knows that," said John McNamee, project manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Southern California.
"What they may not realize is that to be successful at Mars, you have to test the absolute heck out of the thing here on Earth," he further explained.
It was clarified that, although there are thousands of tests being developed and conducted for the space project, there are few tests that still stand out from the rest.
NASA's Perseverance Rover goes through harsh ice, fire, light, and sound trials; Experts say the tests are tougher than Mars' environment
According to NASA Science Mars Exploration Program's report, engineers have put the Mars rover in a special chamber at JPL. The space vehicle was blasted with random sound waves as high as 143 decibels, which is louder than a roaring jet engine, using nitrogen-charged speakers.
The "thermal model" of the rover was tested by the team to better understand what temperature-sensitive subsystems and instruments will encounter once it lands on Mars.
The Rover was placed in JPL's 25-foot-wide, 85-meter-by-26-meter vacuum chamber for a day-long trial. Powerful xenon lamps, several floors below, were used to beam a mirror at the top of the chamber to drench the space vehicle with light.
25 cameras will be launched to the Red Planet by the Mars 2020 mission. However, before the cameras are deployed, each camera had to undergo an "eye" exam after they were installed.
The test is called machine-vision calibration. And the process used target boards featuring grids for the camera's optical performance baseline. The result of the test showed that the rover has a 20/20 vision.
