‘Perseverance’, NASA’s New Rover All Set For Landing In “Seven Minutes of Terror”

NASA’s Perseverance is likely to go through ‘seven minutes of terror’; get more facts…

Thursday, 18th February 2021

NASA is preparing for “seven minutes of terror” as it gears up for landing a new robotic rover on the surface of Mars.

Perseverance, after its seven-month expedition, will make an attempt to land and send its first signals back at around 7:55 am (AEDT) tomorrow.

The SUV-sized spacecraft, in order to make a successful landing, will have to complete a composite series of steps. These were much talked about during the previous landing on the Red Planet in 2012 by Curiosity.

However, although Perseverance looks a lot like its predecessor, it is quite different. According to Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's science mission, this is the first instance that NASA has sent a rover to Mars with the main purpose of finding signs of ancient life.

Dr. Zurbuchen said, “It will attempt to answer a question that has eluded humanity for a generation: whether life has ever existed elsewhere beyond our own planet.”

This expedition will also witness NASA’s first attempt at flying a drone on another planet through its miniature helicopter named Ingenuity. It will also perform experiments that will set the base for human missions to Mars, planned out for the future.

This rover is also novel because it will be the first among several lined-up missions that are programmed to get rock samples from Mars back to Earth.

“This is by far the most ambitious set of missions to Mars in history”, deputy project scientist Ken Williford said.

The landing of Perseverance will be attempted in Jezero Crater and the id scheduled for is scheduled for 3:55 pm US eastern time. The rover is also equipped with a new feature called Range Trigger that decides the precise moment to deploy, based on the craft's position relative to the landing site.

Yet another new technology will be seen in the mission whereby a special camera will be used to identify surface features and compare them to an onboard map where engineers pre-programmed the safest landing sites.

Once at a height of 20m the rover will be lowered to the ground by the sky crane manoeuvre with the use of long cables.

The News Talkie Bureau

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