On the night of February 18, a historical event was held - the Perseverance rover successfully sat on the surface of Mars. Together with him, an ingenuity drone helicopter arrived on the distant planet. The landing site was the Martian crater Ezero, in the place of which the lake could once be located for a long time. It is believed that it is in this place with a lot of probability that the traces of extraterrestrial life can be found. The live broadcast was carried out on YouTube and immediately after the descent to the surface, the device made and sent a photo of the surface of the red planet to Earth. In general, one of the most important events of the beginning of 2021 passed very beautifully, therefore adequately detailed discussion. Let's find out how everything happened and for which I generally need a PERSEVERCE journal.
An interesting fact: if you enter a request "Perseverance" in Google, fireworks will be shown. Perhaps after February 19, this Easter will disappear.
Planting Marshod Perseverance
Landing on the surface of Mars lasted 7 minutes. The landing module of the mission, inside which was a rover and helicopter, entered the atmosphere of the planet at 23:48 Moscow time. At that time, the speed of his movement was approximately 20,000 kilometers per hour. 4 minutes after entering the atmosphere, the module has released a parachute and dropped the heat shield that protects against high temperatures. The device was also activated to determine the distance to the surface of the planet.
Approximately so the same "7 minutes of horror" passed
At the next stage, the system "Heavenly crane" system was launched, which reduced the speed of the module to 0.75 meters per second. When only a few meters left to the surface, the Perseverance rover was neatly lowered on nylon cords. After the so-called "7 minutes of horror", at 23:56 night, the devices successfully landed on the surface.
It is important to note that all this happened in automatic mode. Radio signals from Mars reach the ground in 11 minutes, so it was impossible to manage the process manually. When NASA received a confirmation of a successful landing, the device already sat on the surface and took a picture to one of the 23 cameras.
Mars apparatuses
Perseverance squirrel - the most sophisticated apparatus, which ever was on the surface of the Red Planet. Its mass is equal to 1025 kilograms and it is equipped with cameras and instruments to explore the Martian soil. It is known that the development of NASA cameras took about 7 years. It is believed that the device will be able to study in detail the neighborhood of Crater Ezero, in which about 3.9 billion years ago could be a lake in a depth of about 250 meters. Also on this territory there are signs of the dried delta of the river, in which traces of the organisms who have once lived in Mars could continue.Perhaps, thanks to the Perseverance apparatus, humanity will prove that life existed (or exists!) And on other planets.
Together with the rover, the Ingenuity helicopter was delivered to the Red Planet. It is fixed on the bottom of the Perseverance apparatus and will soon be deployed. After that, it must make approximately 5 flights at an altitude of 3 to 10 meters, a duration of not more than 3 minutes. The maximum distance of one trip will be about 600 meters. All this is necessary in order to make sure that the atmosphere of Mars is suitable for the movement of helicopters. It may also be that ingenuity will not be able to climb into the air. But if everything goes well, it will help with the construction of a route for the Marshode.
Ideally, the flight of the helicopter ingenuity should look like
Studying Mars as part of the Perseverance mission
Over the next months, NASA will check the performance of the marshode and helicopter. After that, research works will begin. It is believed that for the two Earth years, the rover will overcome 15 kilometers of the journey and collect samples of the surface of Mars. After that, the device will be sent to Mars, which will take this load and deliver the land. If no problems arise, the Martian primer will be at the disposal of scientists for the first time in history for a detailed study.
Read more about what the Perseverance market will be engaged in a distant planet, my colleague love Sokovikova wrote in this material. Also, Alexander Bogdanov written in detail about the Perseverance mission in this article.
In the near future, news from Mars will become more than usual. After all, in addition to the Marshode Perseverance on the planet recently flew the Arab station Al A Amal and Chinese Tianwean-1. More information about the Arab mission can be read in this article. And the Chinese station "Tianwean-1" recently sent a fresh video from Mars - see here. Well, of course, stay with us, because there is still a lot of interesting things! For convenience, you can subscribe to our Telegram channel.