Daily Archives: February 22, 2021

The first helicopter ever sent to another world is doing just fine on Mars after surviving a "seven minutes of terror" landing aboard NASA's Perseverance.

The Ingenuity helicopter, which landed on Mars with Perseverance on Thursday (Feb. 18), is awake and communicating with controllers on Earth.

Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) received a downlink on Friday at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, indicating the 4-lb. (2 kilograms) helicopter and its base station are both operating normally.

Related: The Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, here's what to knowLive updates: NASA's Perseverance Mars rover mission

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"Both appear to be working great. With this positive report, we will move forward with tomorrow's charge of the helicopter's batteries," Tim Canham, Ingenuity Mars helicopter operations lead at JPL, said in a statement on Friday.

That power-up procedure, which occurred Saturday (Feb. 20), will charge the six lithium-ion "rotorcraft" batteries to roughly 30% of their planned capacity, and data will be sent back to Earth to decide how to proceed with future battery-charging sessions.

Amazing photo: Wow! See the Perseverance rover dangling above Mars

For now, JPL plans to charge the batteries to 35% capacity in a few more days, and then to do weekly charging sessions to keep the helicopter warm on the cold Martian surface and ready for its eventual flight in a few months.

Ingenuity is getting its power from Perseverance from the time being, but once the rover lets go of the helicopter, the drone will be charging fully on its own, using solar panels.

"After Perseverance deploys Ingenuity to the surface, the helicopter will then have a 30-Martian-day [31-Earth-day] experimental flight test window," JPL said in a statement. A Martian day or "sol" is 24 hours and 37 minutes, compared to Earth's 24 hours, and controllers are operating on Mars time for the first 90 sols of the mission.

"If Ingenuity survives its first bone-chilling Martian nights where temperatures dip as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit [minus 90 degrees Celsius] the team will proceed with the first flight of an aircraft on another world," JPL added. "If Ingenuity succeeds in taking off and hovering during its first flight, over 90 percent of the project's goals will have been achieved. If the rotorcraft lands successfully and remains operable, up to four more flights could be attempted, each one building on the success of the last."

Ingenuity's flights could pioneer a new generation of soaring Mars explorers working either independently, or alongside far-future human landing missions. Flying drones on Mars could scout ahead of rovers to plan the best routes, or hover above dangerous terrain to perform scientific studies, among other applications.

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The first helicopter on Mars phones home after Perseverance rover landing - Space.com

This may be the next iconic space photo.

NASA just released an image showing its Perseverance Mars rover dangling about 6.5 feet (2 meters) above the red dirt during its picture-perfect touchdown inside Jezero Crater yesterday (Feb. 18). The stunning photo was taken by a camera on Perseverance's "sky crane" descent stage, which had nearly finished lowering the SUV-sized robot to the surface on cables at the time.

The image breaks new ground, documenting a Mars landing with detail and immediacy never seen before. It therefore deserves mention with the famous space photos that have moved us all over the years, such as the classic picture of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon in July 1969 and the Hubble Space Telescope's famous "Pillars of Creation" shot, said Adam Steltzner, the chief engineer for Perseverance's mission, which is known as Mars 2020.

Related: What's next for Perseverance after Mars landing success?Live updates: Follow the Perseverance Mars rover mission

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Within 148 pages, explore the mysteries of Mars. With the latest generation of rovers, landers and orbiters heading to the Red Planet, we're discovering even more of this world's secrets than ever before. Find out about its landscape and formation, discover the truth about water on Mars and the search for life, and explore the possibility that the fourth rock from the sun may one day be our next home.View Deal

"It is absolutely exhilarating, and it is evocative of those other images from our experience as human beings, moving out into our solar system those images that bring us into the process of our exploration," Steltzner said during a news conference today (Feb. 19) at which the new image was unveiled. "And I'm so happy that we can contribute another to that collection."

The epic pre-landing photo is just a taste of what's to come. It's part of a high-definition video captured by multiple cameras during Perseverance's entry, descent and landing (EDL), which the Mars 2020 team hopes to have ready to show us by Monday (Feb. 22).

That video could include sound, for the rover sports an EDL microphone. The team does not yet know whether that mic worked yesterday, Steltzner said; that question should be answered over the weekend as Perseverance beams more data home to Earth.

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission in pictures

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The rover's landing sequence was also captured from afar, NASA officials announced today. The agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the Red Planet since 2006, snapped a shot of Mars 2020 cruising through the alien skies beneath its supersonic parachute.

"We're still figuring out the exact timing of when this image was taken as well," Aaron Stehura, the Mars 2020 EDL deputy phase lead, said during today's news conference.

"So, it's even possible that we had already come out of the protective entry capsule and we're coming down on rockets to the surface," Stehura said. He, like Steltzner, is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages the Mars 2020 mission.

The $2.7 billion Mars 2020 is ambitious and diverse. It has two main goals: hunt for signs of ancient life on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago; and collect several dozen especially promising samples for future return to Earth.

But Perseverance is not quite ready to dig into this science work in earnest. The team must first perform the standard post-landing assessments, health checks and deployments, which will take a few days. Those checkouts are already underway, and the early returns are good.

"I'm happy to say that the rover is doing great and is healthy on the surface of Mars," Pauline Hwang of JPL, the Mars 2020 strategic mission manager, said during today's briefing. Perseverance "continues to be highly, highly functional and awesome, and I'm exhilarated," she added.

The six-wheeled robot also still needs to switch over to surface-optimized software, a crucial task that will begin soon and require about four days to complete.

When Perseverance is ready to roll, its first destination will be a helipad a good spot for the mission's helicopter, named Ingenuity, to make a handful of pioneering flights. Ingenuity traveled to Mars on Perseverance's belly and remains attached today; it will drop to the ground at the helipad, which the Mars 2020 team has not yet identified, then take to the skies after Perseverance has rolled a safe distance away.

Ingenuity doesn't have any science instruments it's a technology demonstration but the little craft can take color photos and video, so it may give us an amazing, bird's eye view of Jezero. And Perseverance will attempt to document the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper's flights, both with its cameras and its two microphones. (The other mic is part of the rover's rock-zapping SuperCam instrument.)

It's unclear how long all of this will take. But during a post-landing news conference yesterday, Mars 2020 deputy project manager Jennifer Trosper, also of JPL, gave an estimate: helicopter prep and flights occurring in the spring, and sampling and science work really ramping up this summer.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Wow! See the Perseverance rover dangling above Mars in this amazing landing photo - Space.com

Just minutes after NASA's Perseverance Mars rover nailed its touchdown on the Red Planet, the spacecraft sent back the first two images of its new home in Jezero Crater.

After a seven-month trek to Mars, the Perseverance rover completed the perilous landing procedure nicknamed "seven minutes of terror" on Thursday (Feb. 18), with the successful landing announced just before 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT, or 1 p.m. PST at the mission's headquarters at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Just minutes after the good news arrived, NASA received the rover's first two images.

Live updates: NASA's Perseverance Mars rover landingWatch more: Space.com's Perseverance playlist

Book of Mars: $22.99 at Magazines Direct

Within 148 pages, explore the mysteries of Mars. With the latest generation of rovers, landers and orbiters heading to the Red Planet, we're discovering even more of this world's secrets than ever before. Find out about its landscape and formation, discover the truth about water on Mars and the search for life, and explore the possibility that the fourth rock from the sun may one day be our next home.View Deal

These photographs were taken by hazard cameras attached to the spacecraft and are black and white images; they were also taken with covers still attached to the camera lenses for their protection. Later images from the rover will be much more impressive.

The first image also shows the comforting shadow of the rover itself cast on the Martian surface. The new photographs will also help mission personnel identify precisely where in the landing zone Perseverance touched down.

But these images are just what scientists on the mission wanted to see, showing off the rocky surface of Mars' Jezero Crater. Mission scientists chose the location because they believe that when the Red Planet was still covered in water, the crater was once a lake, with a river delta depositing sediments on its floor.

Studying these rocks, the scientists hope, will allow them to better understand the planet's past habitability and inform the search for traces of life on Mars.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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The view from Mars: Here's the 1st photo from NASA's Perseverance rover! - Space.com

When the Perseverance rover sets down on Mars on Thursday, another NASA spacecraft already there will be listening for the thump-thump that will result when the newcomer arrives.

The hope is that these thumps will create enough shaking to be detected by InSight, a stationary NASA probe that arrived in 2018 to listen for marsquakes with an exquisitely sensitive seismometer. The InSight lander sits more than 2,000 miles to the east of where Perseverance is to land.

We have a reasonable chance of seeing it, said Benjamin Fernando, a graduate student at the University of Oxford in England and a member of the InSight science team.

Unless something goes catastrophically wrong, the seismic signals that InSight might hear will not emanate from the rover itself. Perseverance is to be lowered to the surface from a hovering crane, bumping to the ground gently at slower than 2 miles per hour.

Rather, scientists will be sifting through InSights seismic data for signs of the impacts of two 170-pound blocks of tungsten metal that helped keep Perseverance in a stable, balanced spin during its 300-million-mile trip from Earth. At an altitude of 900 miles above Mars, they will be jettisoned as junk, and without parachutes or retrorockets to slow them down, they will then slam into the surface at some 9,000 m.p.h.

This enormous speed means that theyll make quite a substantial crater, Mr. Fernando said. In 2012, similar tungsten blocks from the Curiosity rover, which is almost the same design as Perseverance, left scars visible from orbit.

Coming in at a shallow 10-degree angle, the blocks impact will be to the east, which should create a splash of seismic energy heading toward InSight that would increase the chances of detecting the vibrations.

If the impact waves are detected, this will not just be a feat of technical skill. The data could help illuminate the structure of the crust of Mars.

The main purpose of the seismometer on InSight is to record marsquakes, and the spacecraft has so far recorded more than 400 such tremors. Scientists also expected that InSight would detect shaking caused by space rocks occasionally crashing into Mars.

But so far, the number of recorded meteor impacts is zero. Or at least there are no wiggles that the scientists could confidently conclude were generated by such collisions. The lack of obvious signals suggests the crust of Mars may be more similar to that of Earths moon than to Earths.

Seismic waves travel farther through solid rock than a pile of loose material like sand. On Earth, the constant churning of plate tectonics generates new solid rocks at the surface. On the moon, there are no longer eruptions of lava, and over billions of years, the bombardment of meteors has broken up the ancient lunar crust into tiny bits. The result is a loose top layer, which explains why the astronauts left so many boot prints during their visits.

Mars is probably somewhere in between the moon and the Earth, Mr. Fernando said.

With Perseverance, however, the exact time and location of the landing will be known, and thus InSight scientists will know where to look in the seismic data and pull out a minuscule signal that would normally be overlooked.

This is similar to how scientists decades ago were able to calibrate the seismometers left on the moon by NASAs Apollo astronauts when pieces of rockets and lunar landers crashed into the moon.

With that knowledge, they could then sift through earlier data and look for similar patterns that could be meteor impacts.

Mr. Fernando and the other InSight scientists also considered other signals that the seismometer might pick up. Perhaps waves of air pressure from the sonic boom of the arriving Perseverance would be enough. Or the sonic boom would shake the ground, generating a wave that would travel to InSight.

But their calculations showed that those rumblings would be too small to be detectable.

They also considered looking out for larger pieces of the spacecraft like the heat shield that will also hit the ground. But those will be jettisoned at lower altitudes and not travel as fast, generating small seismic waves.

Weather could pose another complication. If the winds on Mars are too strong on Thursday, they could buffet InSights seismometer, creating noise that could also obscure the signal from Perseverances arrival.

What lies below the surface of Mars remains in large part a mystery. Indeed, the planets innards thwarted the other main objective of InSight, to deploy a heat probe, nicknamed the mole, that would hammer itself about 16 feet into the Martian soil. But the probe kept bouncing back up.

The sand around the mole exhibited an unexpected property of clumping, and that prevented sufficient friction for the device to propel itself more than 14 inches below the surface.

In January, NASA announced it was giving up on the mole. Nonetheless, the InSight mission was extended until December 2022, with the aim of gathering more seismic data.

Now InSight will have to survive the Martian winter. Its solar panels, shrouded with dust, are now generating only 27 percent as much power as they used to when they were new and clean. None of the hundreds of dust devils essentially tiny tornado whirlwinds in the neighborhood have come close enough to blow away the dust. So the missions managers are figuring out how to operate the spacecraft with less energy, including by switching off some science instruments. That should be enough to keep it from freezing to death, which was the fate of NASAs Opportunity rover in 2018 after being enveloped in a planet-wide dust storm.

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NASA Will Listen for Thumps on Mars From Perseverance Rover's Arrival - The New York Times

NASAs Perseverance rover pictured moments before landing on Mars. In this view from a downward-facing camera on the descent stage, the rover is suspended by Nylon cords. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The first picture of NASAs Perseverance rover landing on Mars shows the nuclear-powered robot suspended under its rocket jetpack just before touchdown. The spectacular view could be upstaged next week with the release of a first-of-its-kind high-definition video replay of the rovers final descent.

The spacecraft carried six ruggedized commercial off-the-shelf cameras to capture video during descent toward Jezero Crater, home to an ancient lakebed that scientists hope harbors clues about the possibility that Mars had life billions of years ago.

Three of the cameras were located on top of the crafts backshell to record video of the supersonic parachute, which helped slow down the rover after entering the Martian atmosphere. After releasing the backshell, the missions descent stage fired eight throttleable braking rockets before lowering the one-ton rover to the surface of Mars in a maneuver known as the sky crane.

There were two cameras on the rover itself, one looking down and another looking up at the rocket pack. And another camera on the descent stage captured imagery of the rover suspended under nylon cords during touchdown Thursday.

NASA released a still image from that camera Friday, offering a never-before-seen view of a spacecraft landing on another planet.

When I think on our human space exploration, I am brought to remember the images that bring us humans into that process, said Adam Steltzner, the Mars 2020 missions chief engineer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Steltzner, a veteran JPL engineer, compared the birds-eye view of the Perseverance rover to other iconic photos in space exploration, such as astronauts on the moon, the first up-close view of Saturn and its rings, and famous images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

We can only hope in our efforts to engineer spacecraft and explore our solar system that we might be able to someday contribute yet another iconic image to this collection, Steltzner said. Im happy to say that Im hopeful we can with this.

The picture shows Perseverance around 7 feet, or 2 meters, above the surface of Mars, Steltzner said.

You can see the mechanical bridles that hold the rover underneath the descent stage, (the)three straight lines heading down to the top deck, Steltzner said. And then the curly electrical umbilical that is taking all of the electrical signals from the descent stage down to the computer inside the belly of the rover.

The nylon bridles unspooled to a length of about 25 feet, or 7.6 meters, as the descent stages retrorockets slowed the vehicle to gently place the rover on the surface. Once the rover detected touchdown, pyrotechnically fired blades engaged to sever the connection with the descent stage, which flew a safe distance away before intentionally crashing into the planet.

Steltzner said the picture released Friday helps bring people on the adventure of space exploration.

The plumes (from the rocket exhaust) are hitting the surface of Mars, kicking up little wisps of dust, he said. It is absolutely exhilarating, and it is evocative of those other images from our experience as human beings moving out into our solar system, those images that bring us into our process of exploration, and Im so happy that we can contribute another to that collection.

Since landing Thursday, the Perseverance rover has fired pyrotechnic restraints to release camera lens covers, the crafts high-gain communications antenna, and robotic arm, according to Pauline Hwang, the rovers assistant strategic mission manager.

More checkouts of the rover and its instruments are planned this weekend, including deployment of Perseverances remote sensing mast, which has a panoramic camera and a Mars weather station. That will allow the rover to begin taking images for a 360-degree panorama in the next few days.

Additional communications sessions with the rover this weekend will be used to transmit more imagery from Thursdays landing. Mission managers said they hope to have video from the landing available in time to release it during a press conference Monday.

Were all chomping at the bit, saidAaron Stehura, deputy lead for the rovers entry, descent, and landing phase. Seeing the rover hangingunderneath the sky crane, underneath our rocket-powered jet pack, this is something that weve never seen before. It was stunning, and the team was awestruck, and there was just a feeling of victory that we were able to capture this and share it with the world.

A microphone on the port side of the rover was expected to record audio during Perseverances landing Thursday. Steltzner said the ground team hopes to confirm this weekend if the microphone worked, and if so, the recording could be downlinked later this weekend or next week. If it worked, the recording may contain audio of the sounds of pyrotechnic devices firing to release the parachute and the sound of the descent stage engines, according to NASA.

NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a picture of Perseverance as it flew under parachute toward the landing zone in Jezero Crater. MROs sharp-eyed mapping camera, known as HiRISE, spotted the rover from a distance of 435 miles, or 700 kilometers, NASA said.

Perseverance also downlinked more pictures from its hazard avoidance cameras overnight, revealing Jezero Crater in color for the first time. An escarpment is visible on the horizon, along with scattered rocks and boulders in the distance.

But the rover ended up at a location with a tilt of just 1 degree, with no obstacles that prevented a safe landing. Perseverance was the first Mars lander to use terrain relative navigation, algorithms that used images taken during descent and compared them pre-loaded orbital imagery, allowing the rover to steer to a safe location within the missions broader landing zone.

Steltzner said Perseverances landing went as smoothly as we could have wanted it to go. The navigation algorithms took the rover toan almost pool table flat landing site with rocks small compared the size of the rovers wheels.

That is exactly what we were hoping for, Steltzner said Friday. So the day went very, very well. We will, as we always do, comb through the detail and look for anomalies that might teach us how to do our jobs better in the future, nut we didnt see any huge ones that stuck out yesterday.

With more pictures coming down from the rover every day, Stehura said its possible Perseverance may have taken photos of the descent stage rocket pack impacting the ground somewhere near the landing site.

Beginning as soon as Monday, ground teams at JPL will send up commands for Perseverance start transitioning to new software governing the rovers mission on the surface of Mars. Up to now, the rover has operated on software designed for the cruise from Earth to Mars, and the entry, descent, and landing, Hwang said.

The process will take about four sols a sol is a Martian day, lasting nearly 24 hours, 40 minutes and will occur very slowly and deliberately, Hwang said. We have two computers on the rover, our prime and our backup computer, so we actually do a checkout of the flight computers before we do full upgrade.

The software code is already stored on the rovers computers. The transition involves telling the computers first the prime and then the backup to toe dip into the new software then to switch back to the existing code. Engineers on Earth will evaluate how the computers performed during the changeover, then give the final go to fully transition to the surface operations software.

With the new software, Perseverance will be ready to perform checkouts of its robotic arm. The first test drive is expected around Perseverances ninth full day on Mars, or around Feb. 27.

If all goes as planned, the rover will complete its post-landing tests and activations next month, clearing the way for Perseverance to drive to a nearby location to deploy the Ingenuity helicopter, a 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft that will attempt to become the first such device to fly through the atmosphere of another planet.

Hwang said the first flight of the helicopter might occur around 60 sols after landing, or some time in mid-to-late April. The test flight might happen earlier if the checkouts with the rover go quicker than expected.

The first pictures from the surface of Jezero Crater also have scientists eager to begin their exploration of a new site on the Red Planet. The 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) crater was created about 3.8-to-3.9 billion years ago by the impact of an asteroid or comet.

The crater was home to a body of liquid water more than 3 billion years ago, with evidence that river once flowed into the lake, depositing sediments in a delta. The rocks Perseverance will study inside the crater are likely between 3.6-to-3.8 billion years old, said Katie Stack Morgan, the missions deputy project scientist.

This is a time in Mars history when water was stable on the surface of Mars, and we think this area would have been a habitable environment, Morgan said.

One rock visible next to one of Perseverances six wheels has already caught the attention of scientists. The rock has holes, which might have been left behind as it solidified from lava, assuming the rock had a volcanic origin. If the rock was created by sedimentary deposits in the ancient lake at Jezero Crater, the holes might have carved from water that flowed through the material, according to Morgan.

We have to get our instruments out and look at these textures in fine detail and help us make that determination, Morgan said.

Scientists want Perseverance to gather both volcanic and sedimentary rock samples for return to Earth by a future mission. Once the specimens are back on Earth, perhaps as soon as 2031, scientists will be able to precisely date the volcanic rocks to anchor assumptions about the evolution of Mars, Morgan said. Sedimentary rocks returned to Earth will tell scientists about the environment of the lake that once filled Jezero Crater, and might contain evidence that the Red Planet had life.

After releasing the Ingenuity helicopter for its test flight campaign, Perseverance will begin visiting scientific targets and could collect its first rock sample this summer. The rover will likely head toward the dried-up river delta, which Morgan said is located a little more than a mile (2 kilometers) from Perseverances landing site.

We cant wait to get this science mission started, Morgan said.

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First images of Mars rover landing just a taste of what's to come Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now