What is Perseverance?
Update: The Perseverance rover has already landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Please visit this page to learn more about the mission.
Perseverance is a Mars rover, named by Alexander Mather. It has already launched on July 30, 2020 and will arrive on Mars in February next year. It has 7 instruments and it will take rock samples and back to Earth in a future mission, for the first time.
Perseverance will land at Jezero Crater and find signs for ancient life. Also, MOXIE, which is Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, will turn the abundant CO2 into oxygen in the martian atmosphere. This is very important for future manned missions as oxygen is vital, both for water, breathing and rocket fuel.
By the way, Perseverance carries a helicopter called Ingenuity. It is the first powered flight ever on other planets except powered landings. The propeller needs to spin pretty fast because there is only 1% of Earth’s atmospheric pressure on Mars.
Why Perseverance launched on that date?
You might be curious about the selected date of the launch. This is because there are launch windows, because of fuel efficiency. The planets are moving around Sun, remember? They need to use the least fuel by the shortest route. But that isn’t just launching the rover towards Mars in the sky because it would miss as Mars is also moving in the journey. The distance of tens of millions of kilometres means it takes 7 months to get to Mars.
Perseverance is a mission to Mars, which encounters a launch window every 26 months. Therefore, NASA chose that date to launch Perseverance. The last launch window, when InSight launched, is in 2018.
Why a lot of rovers including Perseverance explore Mars?
Well, we mainly explore Mars is because it is the most convenient to go there. Although Venus is closer and has a more frequent launch window, most of the missions are orbiters or flybys because of the high atmospheric pressure. Venus can crush any rovers in its atmosphere or soon after it reaches its surface.
Also, we need to prepare for manned missions for Mars. Rovers are now analysing signs of ancient alien life which is possible in the past and doing experiments just like MOXIE does. Also, Ingenuity will test flights on Mars, and it could also help manned missions.
And, we hope the journey for Perseverance will be a success and valuable for manned missions. Bon voyage, Perseverance!