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Perseverance Rover Begins Setting Up Sample Depot on Mars - ExtremeTech
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Perseverance Rover Begins Setting Up Sample Depot on Mars - ExtremeTech [extremetech.com]:
NASA’s Perseverance rover is laying the groundwork to get Mars samples back to Earth. After 15 months of drilling carefully selected bits of the red planet, the robot is beginning the process of setting up a “sample depot” where the future sample return lander will be able to pick up the rover’s titanium rock core tubes. Perseverance won’t be leaving all its tubes in the dust, though.
Perseverance [extremetech.com] is in a region of Jezero Crater known as Three Forks, right at the base of the ancient river delta, which is to be a main focus of the mission going forward. Here, NASA plans to deposit the sample tubes so a future mission can scoop them up for a return to Earth. Since that mission is still in the planning phase, NASA is covering its bases on Mars. It dropped off a cache of several samples [extremetech.com] a few months back, and this new sample depot will be yet another backup for the tubes still contained inside the rover — Perseverance takes two cores from each notable rock, so it will keep duplicates of each tube it drops off.
NASA announced earlier this year that it and the European Space Agency had decided to drop the rover element [extremetech.com] of the sample return mission. Instead, NASA will build two helicopters based on Ingenuity’s design that will be able to pick up sample tubes and deliver them to the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). Perseverance is supposed to deliver its samples directly to the MAV, but in the event it cannot do so, the drones will have to pick up tubes from the depot. So, NASA has to make sure they’re arranged in an efficient manner.
To ensure the helicopters can retrieve samples without encountering obstructions or damaging the samples, NASA will set them out in a zig-zag pattern [nasa.gov]. Each sample needs at least 18 feet (5.5 meters) of clear space around them — some may be up to 49 feet away from another tube. It will take at least a month for the team to become familiar with the terrain around Three Forks and select locations for each tube. Plan A is to have Perseverance deliver its samples to the MAV in the coming years. If we need Plan B, NASA wants to minimize the risk.
Early next year, Perseverance will begin what NASA calls the Delta Top Campaign. The rover will move up higher on the delta, giving the team a chance to search for interesting deposits left by the ancient river. The Sample Return Mission could launch as soon as 2028. The lander will either rendezvous with Perseverance or set course for the sample depot at Three Forks. The ESA’s orbiter will be waiting to carry the samples back to Earth as soon as 2033.
Now read:
- Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Reaches Record Altitude on 35th Flight [extremetech.com]
- Perseverance Rover Collects First Samples of Martian Dirt [extremetech.com]
- Perseverance Mars Experiment Capable of Producing as Much Oxygen as a Single Tree [extremetech.com]
NASA Officially Retires its InSight Mars Lander
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NASA officially retires its InSight Mars lander [engadget.com]:
After two consecutive failed attempts to re-establish contact, NASA on Wednesday officially called [nasa.gov] an end to its InSight Mars mission. On December 15th, the lander made its final transmission to Earth. NASA said it would make the tough decision to call the mission dead after two failed communication attempts earlier this year [nasa.gov]. The agency will continue to listen for a signal “just in case” but notes the odds of that occurring at this point are “considered unlikely.”
NASA shared the news of InSight’s impending demise on Monday when it posted the lander’s final selfie -- taken on April 24th, 2022 -- to Twitter [engadget.com]. Since arriving on the martian surface in 2018, InSight has gradually accumulated dust on its solar panels. Earlier this year [engadget.com], NASA predicted the debris would become too thick for the lander to power itself.
“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” InSight’s final tweet reads. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ [t.co]
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022 [twitter.com]
NASA is being modest when it says InSight’s time on Mars was productive. For more than four years, the lander – its name short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – collected data about the planet’s deep interior. Using a highly sensitive seismometer, InSight detected 1,319 “marsquakes [engadget.com],” including at least one caused by a meteoroid impact [engadget.com]. Using that information, NASA scientists concluded the core of Mars is about half the size of Earth’s. InSight also sent back daily weather reports [engadget.com] and gave humans our first chance to hear some of the sounds of the Red Planet [engadget.com].
“InSight has more than lived up to its name. As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the unit that managed the mission. “Yes, it’s sad to say goodbye, but InSight’s legacy will live on, informing and inspiring.”
