- NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars.
- A tiny helicopter, Imagination, was also sent with the rover.
- Both the systems run on Linux operating system.
After surviving a fiery seven-minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere, NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully touched down on Mars’ surface. The clean landing of the rover sets the stage for a years-long journey. It will scour the Jezero Crater of the Red Planet for ancient signs of life. “Perseverance is ready to start looking for the signs of past life safely on the surface of Mars.” The landing team of about 30 engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California leaped from their seats and cheered at the announcement. Perseverance beamed back the first shot from one of its 19 cameras moments after touching down.
The rover reached the atmosphere of Mars on time at 3:48PM ET. It reached speeds of around 12,100 miles per hour. Diving to the surface in an infamously difficult sequence it reached the surface. Engineers called it the “seven minutes of terror.” There was an 11-minute comms delay between Mars and Earth. With a wickedly complex series of pre-programmed commands, the spacecraft had to perform its seven-minute dive on its own.
Perseverance took Linux with it
Perseverance was not alone in traversing the vastness of space. A tiny helicopter, Imagination, tagged along for the trip. Ingenuity’s destiny is to attempt the first powered flight on any planet other than Earth. Since it is primarily a technology demonstration, and ideally to be the blueprint for future Mars missions. It runs on Linux as well.
“We’re flying Linux on Mars for the first time.” Tim Canham is NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) senior engineer. “The software system we are using is one we built for CubeSats and instruments at JPL. And a few years ago we open-sourced it.” It’s called F ‘(pronounced “F prime”). The fact that it’s open-source means that if you want to travel here on Earth with Linux using the same JPL program, you completely will.
During the post-landing press conference, spirits were high. Thomas Zurbuchen is NASA’s top science official. He was elated and began his remarks on the landing victory of Perseverance. By holding up an imprint of the contingency plan of the mission, he ripped it in half. It was a blueprint for the team if the mission goes wrong. The research team is also studying the numerous low-resolution images that the rover has already beamed back to Earth, she said. With the first drop of audio coming as soon as Thursday night and the first high-definition video of Perseverance’s landing anticipated on Monday, more photos will stream in during the week.
Previous Missions to Mars
Since launching last summer atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the SUV-sized rover has traveled 293 million miles. During a slim window of time, it began as Earth and Mars aligned closely in their orbits around the Sun. The alignment happens only once every two years. NASA launched its rover at about the same time as China and the UAE. UAE’s Martian spacecraft entered the planet earlier this month as well. In the coming months, China’s Tianwen-1 probe, which arrived in Martian orbit on February 10th. It will deploy a lander and rover, joining Perseverance on Mars’ surface just over a thousand miles away.
The journey of Perseverance across space was much more uneventful than expected. Perseverance’s cruise stage conducted fewer orbital correction maneuvers towards the end of its seven-month journey than originally expected, in part due to an ultra-precise insertion when it embarked on its Mars trajectory. “That means they had a ton more propellant when we hit the bullseye” that NASA didn’t have to use on its path to Mars, ULA CEO Tory Bruno told The Verge. As compared to Tianwen-1, which hangs out in orbit before heading to the earth, when hitting Mars, Perseverance booked it straight for the surface.
The Jezero Crater was the most difficult landing site NASA has experienced. To hit its landing site, Perseverance had to stay clear of the cliffs of the crater, huge boulders, and dangerously sandy pits. Scientists assume that some 3.5 billion years ago, the 28-mile-wide hole was a river delta, possibly a gold mine for fossilized microorganisms. The combination of various rock formations provides a smorgasbord of possible samples for researchers to gather during their mission.
Perseverance’s landing
The rover snipped the sky crane cables with its six wheels planted on the earth, causing the rocket-powered descent stage to step further away from Perseverance. The on-time landing at 3:55 PM ET marks the sixth successful Red Planet landing by NASA. The $2.7 billion rovers is basically a 2.263-pound wheel laboratory: Perseverance will traverse Mars’ Jezero Crater for the next few years to gather soil samples for a potential retrieval mission, study the makeup of Martian rocks with a laser-beaming camera system, and deploy an Ingenuity aircraft, a four-foot-on large rotorcraft that will demonstrate the first powered flight on a laser-beaming camera system
Perseverance engineers are already pushing ahead with the next leg of NASA’s Mars ambitions, Zurbuchen said: a sample return mission, a joint venture with the European Space Agency to send a spacecraft fleet to Mars and retrieve the soil samples Perseverance would scatter around the Jezero crater. It is expected to launch the mission sometime in 2026.
