Seven months after the launch from Earth and ~ 471 million km of travel, the Perseverance rover will reach Mars tonight (Kyiv time) and land. This non-trivial event will be broadcast by the US Aerospace Administration. The critical phase will begin no earlier than 22:30.
As of 06:45 a.m. on February 18, the Mars 2020 mission apparatus is still moving towards the target at a speed of 76,744 km / h; he has to overcome only 1.2 million km. NASA claims it will be “the most accurate landing in history” with the latest hardware.
Perseverance should “sit down” in the crater Jezero, where, according to scientists, billions of years ago there was a lake and life could exist. Finding traces of it is one of the primary missions of the next generation US rover. Outwardly, it is almost a copy of the predecessor Curiosity still functioning on Mars, because it is built “in its image and likeness”, but taking into account the progress of technology.
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View the planned rover track in the crater.
How everything should happen:
Just before the descent, the flight module that supported it and the flight module correcting the trajectory will separate from the rover (it will burn in the atmosphere).
Soon after that, the so-called “seven minutes of horror” will come: during this period of time, the rover, hidden from the strongest heating (up to 2100 * C) about the atmosphere, loses this connection with the Earth and makes a descent/landing in automatic mode.
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In other words, whether everything went well or not, we will find out after the fact. For an accurate landing, the rover, unlike Curiosity, is equipped with a radar system, which, after shooting heat sink, begins to scan the relief below and, plus or minus, adjust the course for the most accurate movement to a predetermined landing zone.
Then the “back” cover is disconnected – and the rover, supported by the correction engines, begins to fall down, braking directly at the surface. Approximately 20-21 m from it, the rover gently lowers on the cables and at the moment it touches the ground its speed is no more than 2.7 km / h. This, at least, should be according to the calculations of the engineers.
In order not to fall on it from above, the landing platform with cables flies to the side and breaks at a safe distance.
Read also: We are losing it. InSight on Mars may repeat the fate of the “sleeping” rover Opportunity
In addition to searching for biosignatures, the rover will test technologies for use in future manned flights: for example, obtaining oxygen from the environment, using an Ingenuity helicopter drone in the atmosphere of another planet, sampling 40+ capsules that the future US / EU mission will pick up and send to Earth. , and others. For the first time, the rover was equipped with microphones and cameras that will make it possible to hear the sounds of descent/landing and see this event.
The news is supplemented …
All information about the mission is available by clicking (PDF brochure).
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