It might look like the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity, but the vehicle seen above (in an artist’s impression) is in fact the Mars 2020 rover that is due to be launched on its way to the red planet in July of this year to arrive in early 2021.
Based on the chassis, body and power plant used by Curiosity, the 2020 rover is a very different vehicle that is tasked with very different roles. And now the 2020 rover has a name as well: Perseverance.
The name was selected following a US national competition in which K-12 students (kindergarten through to 17-19 years of age) were invited to suggest a name for the rover in essay form ( a practice NASA has taken with a number of missions to Mars, including the MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity and with Curiosity). From the initial entries received, NASA narrowed the choice down to nine possible names, with the public asked to cast their vote for their favourite – although the final decision on any name remained with NASA management. Those nine names were: Clarity, Courage, Endurance, Fortitude, Ingenuity, Perseverance, Promise, Tenacity and Vision, with each name identified by a single essay selected by NASA as best representing the goals of the pace agency.
The final choice of name, based on a combination of votes for the nine and an internal decision at NASA, was made by the agency’s associate administrator for science missions, Thomas Zurbuchen, who selected the name Perseverance based on an essay by 13-year-old Alexander Mather of Virginia. The formal announcement of the name was made by Zurbuchen at a special event at Alexander’s school on Friday, March 5th.
In making the announcement, Zurbuchen made note of the fact that Curiosity actually started its journey to Mars when Alexander and many of the other competition entrants were babies – or had yet to be born – citing their involvement in the competition as an example of the innate curiosity that draws us to want to explore the planets and stars around us. He also noted why he felt Perseverance was a particularly apt name for the new rover.
Yes, it’s curiosity that pulls us out there, but it’s perseverance that does not let us give up. There’s no exploration without perseverance.
Alex’s entry captured the spirit of exploration. Like every exploration mission before, our rover is going to face challenges, and it’s going to make amazing discoveries. It’s already surmounted many obstacles to get us to the point where we are today – processing for launch. Alex and his classmates are the Artemis generation, and they’re going to be taking the next steps into space that lead to Mars. That inspiring work will always require perseverance. We can’t wait to see that nameplate on Mars.
– Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science missions
As noted above, Perseverance may look like Curiosity, but it is a very different vehicle in terms of mission and capabilities.
In terms of overall science mission, Curiosity was tasked with identifying conditions and finding evidence that show that Mars may have once been capable of supporting life on its surface – a primary mission it actually achieved within three months of arriving on Mars. However, it was not actually capable of identifying whether any of that life – and we’re talking microbial life here – may still be present, or of what it might have been. Perseverance will take the next logical step in the process: it will look for actual signs of past life, or biosignatures, capturing samples of rocks and soil that could be retrieved by future missions and returned to Earth for in-depth study.
To achieve this, Perseverance will carry a host of new science instruments and more advanced versions of some of the systems found on Curiosity, together with additional enhancements born of lessons learned in operating the MSL rover on Mars for the past 8 years.
This means that the rover is slightly larger than Curiosity somewhat heavier, massing just over a metric tonne compared to Curiosity’s 899 kg. Part of this extra weight is accounted for by the systems that allow it to obtain samples of sub-surface material and seal them in containers for possible later retrieval by sample return missions. These include a larger, more robust drilling system mounted on the “turret” at the end of the rover’s robot arm, which also in part accounts for the increase in weight of that unit from 30 kg to 45 kg.
Also, while Curiosity is equipped with 17 camera systems, with only four of them colour imagers. Perseverance has 23 cameras, the majority of which are colour imaging systems. These include a suite of 7 cameras that will provide unique views of the rover’s descent and landing, including views of the parachute deployment and views of it being winched to the ground by its hovering “skyhook” platform It also has a pair of “ears” – microphones that, if they work (NASA’s past attempts to operate microphones on Mars haven’t been successful), will allow us to hear the Red Planet for the first time.
Two further key differences between the two rovers are that Perseverance has a different set of wheels that are larger and designed to better handle Martian terrain, which has taken its toll on Curiosity’s six wheels. Perseverance’s steering has been updated to give it better manoeuvring capabilities, while the second major difference is that Perseverance has a massively updated self-driving capability. These updates mean that Perseverance will be able to map its route far better than Curiosity, calculating route options five times faster than the older rover. This will eventually seen the time required to map and plan each stage in the rover’s drive route reduced from around a day to about 5 hours. In turn, this means that while Perseverance will travel at the same speed as Curiosity, it will be able to cover more ground in the same time periods, and gather more samples over the course of its prime mission.
Continue reading “Space Sunday: Mars rovers, molecules & 1.8 billion pixels”
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