The primary helicopter NASA despatched to Mars carried out so nicely that it’s sending two extra.
The helicopters are much like Ingenuity, the “Marscopter” that accompanied NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars. However they are going to have the added means of with the ability to seize and carry small tubes stuffed with items of Martian rock. (Consider them as alien drones, related in idea to these Amazon has developed to ship packages.)
It is a part of a significant shakeup of NASA’s subsequent massive mission to Mars, a collaboration with the European House Company to convey Martian rocks again to Earth for in-depth examination by scientists utilizing state-of-the-art lab gear that will not cannot slot in a spaceship. .
“Now we have a method ahead utilizing a revised and progressive structure,” Thomas Zurbuchen, affiliate administrator for NASA’s science department, mentioned at a press convention Wednesday that offered an replace on the mission. referred to as the Mars Pattern Return.
The Perseverance rover drilled rock samples whereas exploring a crater named Jezero. It focuses on a dry river delta alongside the crater rim, a chief location the place indicators of historic life could possibly be preserved if organisms ever lived there.
The unique plan was to ship an ESA-built rover to choose up the samples and convey them again to the lander, the place they’d be loaded onto a rocket and launched into Mars orbit. One other spacecraft would seize the container with the rocks and take them to Earth. However the rover design was getting greater and, with that rocket, getting too heavy to suit on a lander. Earlier this 12 months, NASA introduced it will be utilizing two landers – one for the rover and one for the return rocket.
Mission revamp eliminates the Salvage Rover. As an alternative, the plan is for Perseverance to journey to the lander, the place 30 rock samples could be loaded onto the return rocket. As Curiosity, a rover practically an identical in design to Perseverance, continues to function on Mars a decade after its arrival, NASA officers are assured that Perseverance will nonetheless be in working order when the Mars Pattern Return lander arrives. in 2030.
Helicopters could be a back-up choice if one thing goes fallacious with Perseverance. The pattern return lander would arrange close to the place Perseverance had dropped the rock samples on the bottom, sealed in cigar-sized tubes. Helicopters would then fly the samples again to the lander.
The journey again to Earth would take one other few years, touchdown in a small capsule in 2033.
NASA officers have been shocked by the continued accomplishments of Ingenuity, transported to Mars below Perseverance. Initially, the helicopter was to fly a number of occasions throughout a month-long expertise demonstration shortly after the mission landed on Mars in February 2021, then Perseverance would go away Ingenuity behind and proceed its major science mission. Ingenuity has now flown 29 occasions.
However the flights of the Ingenuity – a tough technological problem within the wispy air of Mars – have been so profitable that NASA determined to have the helicopter proceed to comply with Perseverance, serving as an aerial scout of the panorama. coming.
“We made our determination primarily based on new research and up to date accomplishments on Mars that allowed us to contemplate choices that frankly weren’t out there a 12 months in the past or earlier than,” Dr Zurbuchen mentioned. .
The helicopters for the pattern return mission could be roughly the identical dimension, however with the addition of small wheels on the backside of the touchdown legs. This is able to permit every of the helicopters to journey a brief distance to overlap a pattern tube; then a small robotic arm would decide up the tube.
With the restoration rover eradicated, the Mars Pattern Return mission solely requires one lander, not two. This simplifies mission design – every touchdown on Mars provides threat – and helps cut back prices.
The entire price of the mission will probably be a number of billion {dollars}, however NASA wouldn’t speculate on the quantity. “All I can say proper now could be the plain,” mentioned Jeff Gramling, Mars Pattern Return program director at NASA. “One lander definitely prices lots lower than two.”
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