For the past seven months (the number 7 is just haunting us) NASA's newest rover has been consistently moving towards the end point of its journey. The landing on the Red Planet should take place in a week - February 18. But for now, the rover is in hiding, all we've gotten from the rover over the past few months is an audio recording of its cooling pumps.
Calm progress towards Mars will soon be replaced by stormy activity - an active descent and work awaits the apparatus ahead. First you need to enter the correct orbit, then - to descend to the surface of the Earth's neighbor. And all this without the possibility of human intervention. The developers of the project call all this "seven minutes of horror", since the descent will take only about 400 seconds, after which the rover will be on the surface in the Jezero crater.
By the way, 9 years ago a note was published on Habré with the title "Seven minutes of horror", and it was about Curiosity, and the descent to Mars of this device. And now we have a new rover, and we are waiting for its launch again. And scary and interesting at the same time. Plus, there is a little something to be proud of - nevertheless, humanity has greatly accelerated in the development of near-earth space.
In order for everything to go as it should, all the systems of the apparatus and the release system must work perfectly. This was the case before, and I would like to hope that everything will be the same now. The stakes are high, and let's see what exactly the machine will need to go through.
Slower please
In order to fully understand the complexity of the mission, let's assess the scale of the problem. When the spacecraft was launched in July, Mars and Earth were in optimal positions in their orbits. Experts calculated the launch time so that the rover would cross 480 million kilometers between the two planets in the shortest time. At the same time, "Perseverance" is built for a specific mission, it is sent to a certain point on the Red Planet.
The Jezero crater mentioned above is an ancient lake bed with a diameter of 40 km. For a person, 40 km is a lot, but for a spacecraft that has flown millions of kilometers, it is practically nothing, less than a point. But you need not just to get to the point, but also to a certain part of it. In one area of Jezero, there is a place that was definitely a river system in the past. Moreover, this system was formed already on the site of the crater, for many tens of thousands of years the river carried its waters and various substances into the lake. The river delta is located just at the beginning of the crater. On Earth, the delta of almost any river is simply teeming with life. Scientists suggestthat if life existed on Mars at one time, then its traces must be looked for just in the delta. The rover is going to descend near the delta, avoiding places with boulders and generally fragmented surface.
Another problem is the size of the rover itself, not the crater. Like the previous system, "Perseverance" is simply huge (as for a spacecraft). Its length is 3 meters and its weight exceeds 1000 kg. It is very difficult to safely lower such a giant. But, by the way, this problem has already been solved earlier, so, hopefully, everything will work out this time as well. NASA has prepared an excellent animation of the mission descent phase.
It all starts with the fact that the landing capsule with the rover inside is separated from the transport platform with solar panels and engines that brought the rover from Earth to Mars. At this point, the speed of the system is about 20,000 km / h, so it is extremely important to slow down. The heat shield of the capsule at this time will protect the rover from heating - the temperature will rise to more than 1000 degrees Celsius.
Final stage
Despite the rarefaction, there is turbulence here, so the rover will have to adjust its trajectory using a special lander motor. During entry into the atmosphere, the rover will slow down to 1500 km / h. At this stage, the nylon and kevlar parachute is deployed. It unfolds and fills with "air" in just 500ms, further slowing the rover down.
Then, at an altitude of about 2 km from the surface, the descent capsule will throw off the heat shield, while the speed decreases already to 360 km / h. Then the final landing system "Sky Crane" is separated from the capsule. The rover is fixed to it. The system is powered by a set of eight landing jet engines that will first hover the platform over the surface of Mars, and then Perseverance will be launched on special ropes.
During the landing phase, the rover wheels will extend into the operating position. If the process goes as it should, then the vertical speed of the rover when descending to the surface of the planet will be only about 2 km / h.
If something goes wrong, the lander can move the rover to safety. Then it must separate, and so as not to damage the rover itself. The Sky Crane will move away from the landing site at a 45 degree angle to maximize the distance between itself and the rover. The platform will fly until the fuel in the tanks runs out, after which, as scientists expect, it will fall to the surface of Mars far beyond the Jezero crater.
What then?
As for "Persistence", the rover will test the health of its systems and report the result to the dispatchers. They will know about it approximately 11 minutes after the start of the planting process. Well, after that, if all systems are working properly, the rover will begin the main mission to study the surface of the Red Planet. By the way, we can see the landing of the device in all its glory and even hear thanks to the large number of cameras and microphones that the rover is equipped with. True, this data, due to the narrow communication channel, will reach the Earth only in a few weeks. They will be processed and only then presented to the world.
How accurate the calculations should be for a mission of this complexity is hard to imagine. This mission is probably one of the most difficult ever completed by humanity. The mission of Curiosity is comparable to it, and if it did not go smoothly, then one could strongly doubt the success of the current enterprise.
NASA will talk about the landing on their channel, so don't miss it.
