NASA to Host Virtual Briefing on February Perseverance Mars Rover Landing

NASA is hosting a media briefing on Wednesday, Jan. 27, at 4:30 p.m. EST to discuss the upcoming landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. The event will air live on NASA TV, the agency's website, and YouTube. Perseverance lands Feb. 18, carrying new science instruments and technologies, including the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on its belly. Perseverance will use a drill on the end of its robotic arm to capture rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) samples in metal tubes, which will be deposited on the surface of Mars for a future mission to collect and return to Earth. The rover will seek signs of ancient life on the Red Planet as a primary goal.

Perseverance was built and managed for NASA by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Participating in the briefing are:


Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Lori Glaze, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
Matt Wallace, Mars 2020 deputy project manager, JPL
Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent, and landing lead, JPL
Ken Farley, Mars 2020 project scientist, Caltech
Briony Horgan, Mars 2020 science team member, Purdue University


Media who would like to ask questions via phone during the event must provide their name and affiliation by noon EST Tuesday, Jan. 26, to Rexana Vizza at rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov.

Media and the public also may ask questions on social media during the briefing using #CountdownToMars.

To learn more about Perseverance, visit:

https://nasa.gov/perseverance

 and

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

A European dream team for Mars

European scientists will help select rocks and soil from Mars in the search for life on our planetary neighbour. Five European researchers are part of NASA's Mars 2020 science team to select the most promising martian samples bound for Earth. The mission to Mars launched last week for its seven-month journey to the Red Planet. Once there, the team will guide the Perseverance rover as it hunts for evidence of ancient microbial life. The group is made up of researchers from Belgium, France, Sweden and the UK. "These top scientists from across Europe are experts on how to collect, analyse and read the history of the rocks under our feet. Now they will also have to anticipate the needs and challenges of working with martian samples returned to laboratories back on Earth," says ESA's Mars Sample Return acting programme scientist Gerhard Kminek. For the next three years, the team will be at the core of a wider NASA team. Mark Sephton, Professor of organic geochemistry at Imperial College London in the UK, sees it as "a fantastic opportunity to have some of the finest minds in the world come together to solve one of the biggest questions in the Solar System: was there life on Mars?" Sandra Siljestrom, from Sweden's research institute RISE, dreams of having the "Bring it to me now!" feeling while remotely analysing a rock spotted on Mars at the rover landing site - the Jezero crater. The area contains sediments of an ancient river delta, where evidence of past life could be preserved if it ever existed on the planet.

Once the Perseverance rover retrieves samples of rock and soil from Mars, it will seal them in canisters and drop them on the surface to be collected by a future retrieval mission.

"The Mars 2020 mission is the first step for the ultimate martian challenge: the Mars Sample Return campaign. NASA and ESA aim to deliver the material from the martian surface to Earth by 2031," adds Gerhard.

To bring Mars samples to Earth, three carefully timed missions are required.

NASA will deliver the ESA Sample Fetch Rover to the vicinity of the Mars 2020 landing site. This European rover will autonomously track down and collect up to 36 sample tubes deposited by Perseverance, and take them to NASA's Mars Ascent vehicle.

Better together
The team of European scientists believes the road to Mars and back to Earth is like a long-distance run that is best undertaken together.

"I hope that, as a group of scientists with diverse expertise, we will help maximise the quality, depth and breadth of research possible with the returned samples," says palaeontologist Keyron Hickman-Lewis, who has closely worked with ESA's ExoMars rover team.

No place like Mars
Mars is currently the only planetary body accessible to humans on which scientists expect to find relatively unspoilt geological records from the early history of the Solar System.

Finding traces of life "would represent an incredible discovery and a be a gamechanger for our views on how organisms emerge," says cosmochemist Frederic Moynier.

There is no place quite like Mars to find out whether the conditions for supporting life ever existed beyond Earth.

"The Red Planet is the perfect laboratory to check as the environment has dramatically changed over time," says Vinciane Debaille , geochemist at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, in Belgium.

Sandra has little doubt, "there will be surprises when we land on Mars". She and her new team cannot wait to receive the first data.

Johnson-Built Device to Help Mars Perseverance Rover Search for Signs of Life

Later this summer, NASA is launching the Mars Perseverance Rover to the Red Planet with the Mars 2020 Mission. The rover is loaded with equipment to search for signs that there once was life on Mars. One device, called the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, will be used to detect chemicals on the Martian surface that are linked to the existence of life. To keep the instrument working well, a team from the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) recently built a new calibration device for the rover to check SHERLOC's function and properly tune it during the upcoming mission. "SHERLOC is pretty complicated, and we came up with a list of 11 things that all have to be calibrated on this instrument," said Marc Fries, ARES planetary scientist and Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover instrument co-investigator. "This sophisticated calibration device is also going to be used for a lot of other scientific and engineering investigations, and we're really excited that it's JSC's contribution to the Mars 2020 rover." SHERLOC is mounted on the end of the rover's seven-foot robotic arm and includes a laser, camera and chemical analyzers, called spectrometers. The sensitive components will be used together to search for substances that have been altered by water and possibly reveal evidence of past microscopic life on Mars.

"The rover's scientific instruments go through all sorts of harsh conditions from the time they leave the lab until they arrive on the surface of Mars. SHERLOC needed a way to make sure it still operates as expected once it's on the surface and throughout the duration of the mission," said Trevor Graff, a scientist from Jacobs who works for ARES.

The solution was to create the calibration target, or "cal target" for short. The device is approximately the size of a large cell phone and mounted on the front of the rover. On its face are 10 "targets," which consist of samples of different materials. The idea is that researchers will occasionally check SHERLOC's function by directing it to scan the different materials on the cal target. The researchers will already know what the readings on those materials should be when SHERLOC is working correctly. If the actual readings are off, they'll make adjustments to SHERLOC to get it set properly, or know to compensate for the errors when they analyze the data later.

Graff led the JSC cal target team, which included Jacobs engineers Ryan Weiner and Vinh Tran.

"I don't always get to see the hardware that I work on in person," Weiner said, "So I really enjoyed being so hands-on helping to assemble the calibration target."

"It was a great experience overall, and I'm confident the design will arrive on Mars in one solid piece," Tran added.


Science on the Side

In addition to tuning SHERLOC, the targets on the calibration device are serving double duty in other tests and experiments. For example, a number of the targets hold spacesuit materials that could one day be used to protect astronauts exploring Mars. SHERLOC's scans of those materials will not only help tune the instrument, but measure how the advanced fabrics and other suit materials will hold up in the Martian environment, too.

"We also plan to build a small Mars exposure instrument here at JSC, and match the conditions inside it with weather data from the rover," Fries said. "We'll then place an identical set of spacesuit samples inside the chamber and periodically remove them to, for example, test the strength of fabrics or the clarity of helmet visor plastics. The result is we'll be able to test spacesuit materials in Mars-like conditions long before astronauts ever go there."

Another target contains an actual sample of a meteorite ejected from Mars long ago and discovered on Earth in 1999. Researchers plan to closely watch the rock sample to see how the Martian environment alters it over time, which will help them understand the chemical interactions between the planet's surface and its atmosphere.

NASA's Perseverance Rover Spacecraft Put in Launch Configuration

Engineers working on NASA's Perseverance rover mission at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida have begun the process of placing the Mars-bound rover and other spacecraft components into the configuration they'll be in as they ride on top of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The launch period for the mission opens on July 17 - just 70 days from now. Called "vehicle stacking," the process began on April 23 with the integration of the rover and its rocket-powered descent stage. One of the first steps in the daylong operation was to lift the descent stage onto Perseverance so that engineers could connect the two with flight-separation bolts. When it's time for the rover to touch down on Mars, these three bolts will be released by small pyrotechnic charges, and the spacecraft will execute the sky crane maneuver: Nylon cords spool out through what are called bridle exit guides to lower the rover 25 feet (7.6 meters) below the descent stage. Once Perseverance senses it's on the surface, pyrotechnically-fired blades will sever the cords, and the descent stage flies off. The sky crane maneuver ensures Perseverance will land on the Martian surface free of any other spacecraft components, eliminating the need for a complex deployment procedure. "Attaching the rover to the descent stage is a major milestone for the team because these are the first spacecraft components to come together for launch, and they will be the last to separate when we reach Mars," said David Gruel, the Perseverance rover assembly, test, and launch operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages rover operations. "These two assemblies will remain firmly nestled together until they are about 65 feet [20 meters] over the surface of Mars."

On April 29, the rover and descent stage were attached to the cone-shaped back shell, which contains the parachute and, along with the mission's heat shield, provides protection for the rover and descent stage during Martian atmospheric entry.

Whether they are working on final assembly of the vehicle at Kennedy Space Center, testing software and subsystems at JPL or (as the majority of the team is doing) teleworking due to coronavirus safety precautions, the Perseverance team remains on track to meet the opening of the rover's launch period. No matter what day Perseverance launches, it will land at Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

Mars Helicopter attached to Perseverance Mars rover

With the launch period of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opening in 14 weeks, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the past week, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed important milestones, fueling the descent stage - also known as the sky crane - and attaching the Mars Helicopter, which will be the first aircraft in history to attempt power-controlled flight on another planet. Over the weekend, 884 pounds (401 kilograms) of hydrazine monopropellant were loaded into the descent stage's four fuel tanks. As the aeroshell containing the descent stage and rover enter the Martian atmosphere on Feb. 18, 2021, the propellant will be pressure-fed through 120 feet (37 meters) of stainless steel and titanium tubing into eight Mars landing engines. The engines' job: to slow the spacecraft, which will be traveling at about 180 mph (80 meters per second) when it's 7,200 feet (2,200 meters) in altitude, to 1.7 mph (0.75 meter per second) by the time it's about 66 feet (20 meters) above the surface. Maintaining this rate of descent, the stage will then perform the sky crane maneuver: Nylon cords spool out to lower the rover 25 feet (7.6 meters) below the descent stage; When the spacecraft senses touchdown at Jezero Crater, the connecting cords are severed and the descent stage flies off. "The last hundred days before any Mars launch is chock-full of significant milestones," said David Gruel, the Mars 2020 assembly, test and launch operations manager at JPL. "Fueling the descent stage is a big step. While we will continue to test and evaluate its performance as we move forward with launch preparations, it is now ready to fulfill its mission of placing Perseverance on the surface on Mars."

The Helicopter
After the descent stage fueling, the system that will deliver the Mars Helicopter to the surface of the Red Planet was integrated with Perseverance. The helicopter, which weighs 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) and features propellers 4 feet (1.2 meters) in diameter, is cocooned within the delivery system.

In one of the first steps in the day-long process on April 6, technicians and engineers made 34 electrical connections between the rover, the helicopter and its delivery system on the rover's belly. After confirming data and commands could be sent and received, they attached the delivery system to the rover.

Finally, the team confirmed the helicopter could receive an electrical charge from the rover. Before being deployed onto the surface of Jezero Crater, the Mars Helicopter will rely on the rover for power. Afterward, it will generate its own electrical power through a solar panel located above its twin counter-rotating propellers.

The helicopter will remain encapsulated on the rover's belly for the next year and will be deployed around the beginning of May - roughly two-and-a-half months after Perseverance's landing. Once the rover drives about 330 feet (100 meters) away and the helicopter undergoes an extensive systems check, it will execute a flight-test campaign for up to 30 days.

The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. No matter what day Perseverance launches during its July 17-Aug. 5 launch period, it will land on Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover gets its wheels and air brakes

Final assembly and testing of NASA's Perseverance rover continues at Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the July launch window approaches. In some of the last steps required prior to stacking the spacecraft components in the configuration they'll be in atop the Atlas V rocket, the rover's wheels and parachute have been installed. Perseverance received its six flight wheels on March 30, 2020. While the rover took a test drive last December, it was on "flight spares" that wouldn't be making the trip to Mars. Designed for the kind of off-roading Perseverance will perform on the Red Planet, the wheels are re-engineered versions of the ones NASA's Curiosity has been using on its traverses of Mount Sharp. Machined out of a block of flight-grade aluminum and equipped with titanium spokes, each wheel is slightly larger in diameter and narrower than Curiosity's, with skins that are almost a millimeter thicker. They also feature new treads, or grousers: In place of Curiosity's 24 chevron-pattern treads are 48 gently curved ones. Extensive testing in the Mars Yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the rover and manages operations, has shown these treads better withstand the pressure from sharp rocks and grip just as well or better than Curiosity's when driving on sand.

The Parachute
The job of adding Perseverance's parachute to the back shell, where the rover will be stowed on the journey to the Red Planet, took several days and was finished on March 26. Tasked with slowing the heaviest payload in the history of Mars exploration from Mach 1.7 to about 200 mph (320 kph) during the rover's landing on Feb., 18, 2021, the 194 pounds (88 kilograms) of nylon, Technora and Kevlar fibers are packed so tightly into a 20-inch-wide (50-centimeter-wide) aluminum cylinder that it is as dense as oak wood. When deployed at about 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the Martian surface, the chute will take about a half-second to fully inflate its 70.5-foot-wide (21.5-meter-wide) canopy.

The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. No matter what day Perseverance launches during its July 17-Aug. 5 launch period, it will land on Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.