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Perseverance Rover

‘Seven Minutes of Terror’ faced by NASA Perseverance Rover before landing on Mars

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Scientists hold their breaths as NASA’s Perseverance Rover enters into the thin Martian atmosphere and faced ‘seven minutes of terror’ before landing. NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance is a robotic astrobiology lab that is designed and fit inside a space capsule. The rover was in its seven-month-long journey from Earth and it is about to land on the Martian land surface this week. The Perseverance rover is expected to emit a radio alert as it enters the atmosphere of Mars.

The signal transmitted by the rover is received at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) situated near Los Angeles. This signal will travel more than 200 million km and by the time the managers in the laboratory are able to receive it, the rover is expected to land on Mars’ surface. The expected time between entering the Martian atmosphere and landing on the surface is seven minutes whereas the radio signal transmission time to Earth is more than eleven minutes. The rover’s final descent started on Thursday and the JPL engineers have their fingers crossed for a safe landing.

JPL descent and landing team

The Mars perseverance rover mission is worth $2.7billion (approximately). Al Chen, head of the JPL descent and landing team mentioned that the safe landing part is the most difficult and dangerous part of the mission. Chen also mentioned that in such missions ‘success is never assured’ as this time the team tried to land the most complicated and heavy rover they have ever built on a landing site that they never attempted before. If the landing is successful, this mission will open many doors for the scientist to know and explore if life ever existed beyond Earth.

This mission if successful will be followed by more human missions on Martian land. But, before all the discoveries and research, a safe landing is the biggest priority. The rover is six-wheel heavy machinery that will land with the help of a giant parachute (supersonic) followed by deployment of a jet-powered sky crane. The main function of the sky crane is to successfully land the rover on the target spot safely and it will also hover over the surface while descending the rover to the surface on a tether. (Gadgets 360) Al Chen also mentioned that the perseverance rover has to do this all on her own and the team cannot be of any help at this stage.

Perseverance Rover
Image Source: tribune.com.pk

If the mission is successful, the JPL team is expected to receive a signal before 1PM (Pacific time) confirming the safe landing on the Martian soil.

More about the mission

The Mars Perseverance Rover has embarked on a two-year mission from Earth and its main objective is to search for evidence for microbial life that might have flourished on the planet billions of years ago. To do this job, the rover will engage a complex suit of instruments that will search for signs. There will be drilling operations on the rocks of Mars which will be sealed in tubes to further bring back to Earth and carry out research. This will become the first such specimen to be collected by humankind from another planet. (Reuters) The landing site of the rover is on Jerezo Crater, a 28-mile wide space on the land which is expected to be rich in fossils of microorganisms.

Objectives of the mission

NASA is planning another two such missions whose only objective will be to bring back those samples from Mars. The rover also has a small drone helicopter that will test surface-to-surface powered flight on another world for the first time. (Gadgets 360) Another objective is to extract pure oxygen and carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere which will be evidence that future human survival is possible on Mars. The scientists are mostly looking for organic molecules which will be proof that microorganisms did survive in the Martian atmosphere.

For the production of oxygen missions, the space agency will deploy an instrument that will produce 10 grams of oxygen an hour using the electrolysis process. Since the mission started amid the pandemic due to COVID 19, there will be much fewer people in the control room. The mission’s deputy project manager also mentioned that COVID-19 cannot stop them from carrying out such big research and setting out for more such missions.

virgin orbit

Virgin Orbit Plans to Be the First Company to Send Commercial CubeSats to Mars

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There are none of the companies which is not interested in exploring the Red Planet. Now the spin-off company of Richard Branson‘s space tourism company Virgin Galactic, the Virgin Orbit has also got new plans to explore the Earth’s neighbouring planet.

Today the company announced that it has partnered with a Polish satellite company, SatRevolution, such that together these will be working on building smallsat CubeSats and send them to Mars. The company has also got around a dozen Polish universities, including AGH University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, having a vast experience in the space technology, onboard to work on the same project. Virgin Orbit also revealed that the company is trying to get its first satellite ready and send it as soon as 2022.

The company’s new mission is said to be inspired by NASA’s recent InSight mission. NASA under its InSight mission successfully sent two CubeSats (small spacecraft of the size of a cereal box) to Mars in November 2018, And now, Virgin Orbit wants to send a series of CubeSats to the Red Planet under its three robotic missions.

virgin orbit
Image Source: ukdefencejournal.org.uk

The company will carry out the three missions in the next decade starting from 2022. These missions will make Virgin Orbit the first private company to complete a purely commercial trip to Mars, as there are only four organisation that has successfully completed their Mars missions and that too, the government-owned ones. Even the Major player in the private space industry, SpaceX has not been able to do a similar mission till now.

So the mission might not only be to send the CubeSats to Mars, but to make Virgin Orbit the first company for bringing commercial CubeSats to the “Red Planet”.

According to the company, despite being small satellites, the CubeSats will help to dig deeper into Mars’ atmospheric conditions, its orbit as well as surface and help in researching on the planet by providing key information. The smallsats will be able to click and send in images, analyse the Mars’ atmosphere, and even look for water on and under the martian surface. The company has not given any other information but has revealed that the spacecraft can weigh around 50 KG.

The company will be operating from multiple spaceports including the Mojave Air, Space Port in California as well as Cornwall Spaceport in the U.K. The company will be making use of its LauncherOne rocket to launch the CubeSats from in between the air.

NASA collaborates with US based Space Agencies

NASA to Collaborate with Commercial U.S. Based Space Agencies to Advance Mars, Moon Technologies

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NASA is the first agency to land on the surface of the moon, and the world’s top space agency, too. But it seems to further extend its operations, NASA needs the support of other organisations as well. Leading to this, the organisation has announced a partnership with the long list of various commercial U.S. based space agencies, including SpaceX, BlueOrigin, and Lockheed Martin.

NASA has partnered with thirteen U.S. based space agencies and has formed partnerships on 19 different technologies that will help it advance its operations for reaching out and landing on other planets and extend its research on Mars and the lunar surface.

Through the Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity initiative, NASA had invited proposals from different space organisations. The agency had asked those organisations to submit proposals for the technology they want to work upon. On the basis of various factors, the agency has selected thirteen different organisations.

NASA collaborates with US based Space Agencies
Image Source: nasa.gov

With those agencies, NASA will be providing appropriate resources and support, such that they can continue their research work on the selected technology. The organisations will be working collaboratively on different operations, including landing on other planets, navigating over the surface of the Moon, transferring propellant in space, improving spacecraft operation, etc.

The Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company will work on a fuel cell-based power system to be used in the company’s Blue Moon lander. The company will be collaborating with NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Goddard Space Flight Center. Along with that, the company will work on a new navigation system. The system will help in an accurate and safe landing of spacecraft on various parts of the Moon. It will also be developing a new power system, that will empower the landers on the Moon in the lunar nights or for at least two weeks.

On the other hand, SpaceX will be collaborating with the Kennedy Space Center. The two will be working on improving the technology that helps in verticle landing of bigger landers, at the place where the gravity is not that strong, like on the moon and other zero-gravity environments. Other than that, the company will work on improving the workability of the reusable rockets. With the new technology, the rocket propellent can be moved through one vehicle to the other efficiently, within the orbit.

The third biggest company, Lockheed Martin, will be working on robotics and autonomous technologies that would help in plantation and farming in the space so that it will be possible to harvest plants in the deep space in the coming future.

Other than these three companies, Advanced Space will be the part of NASA’s lunar navigation technologies research works and Vulcan Wireless will be helping NASA test the CubeSat radio transponder, and its compatibility with NASA’s Space Network.

Aerogel Technologies, Spirit AeroSystem Inc., Anasphere, Bally Ribbon Mills, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Maxar Technologies, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Colorado Power Electronics Inc., are the other companies that have been selected by NASA to work on its various operations, related to Mars and the Moon missions.

Nasa’s Mars InSight Probe Successfully Arrives at the Red Planet

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Nasa’s Mars InSight probe has successfully landed on the surface of Mars after a long journey of 300m-mile, that is covered in seven months. InSight – short for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport,” is an $830 million robot, that has been sent to Mars to know the planet better.

The robot landed at the quietest place on Mars, Elysium Planitia, a vast, smooth lava plain, also called as “the biggest parking”, shortly before 8 pm GMT on Monday. There were cheers and hugs among the scientists at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, when the InSight robot sent the signals of its successful arrival on the planet.

insight
Image Source: spaceflightnow.com

“It was intense, and you could feel the emotion,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, on receiving a congratulatory phone call from Vice President Mike Pence. “What an amazing day for NASA,” he added. The robot also sent a picture of itself, soon after a few minutes of its arrival on the surface. Due to the dust, the picture came out to be a bit blurred, but NASA claims that the next pictures will be more clear.

NASA launched the mission on May 5, this year, from the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, unlike the other missions, that were launched from the Cape Canaveral. The robot landed on Mars successfully, after it blasted off its heat shield and fired retro-thrusters to slow its descent when it entered into the thin Martian atmosphere and released a parachute.

The robot will accomplish a two years mission and will be studying more about the core, crust and mantle of the planet. The robot is further focused on researching the climate and the formation of the planed more than 4.6bn years ago. The InSight mission is one of the 40% Mars missions that have been successful in the past. The lander is embedded with a seismometer, that will work as an ear listen to the vibrations on the ground. It is capable of recording a dozen to 100 Marsquakes of magnitude 3.5 or greater, during its two years mission on the planet.

It also consists of a heat probe, that will measure the Mars’ heat rate under the ground. The scientists will also calculate the size of the Mars’ core, with the help of the antenna attached to the robot, that will measure the Mars’ wobbles on its axis. There are a lot more enclosed in the mission that will be revealed in steps after the mission moves further.

Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s lead scientist from JPL, said, “When we look at the crust of Mars, that’s a snapshot into the past, of what the crust of the Earth might have looked like 4.5 billion years ago before it got all busy. It will take about two years to collect the data needed to answer the mission’s “deep questions.” depending on how many quakes Mars has in store.”