News from planet Mars

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

On May 4, 2022, the Mars InSight Lander seismometer recorded a long-awaited “big one”. A marsquake measuring 5 on the Richter scale. The largest quake recorded on another planet, though far below the largest quakes recorded on planet Earth. The Mars InSight Lander seismometer is part of the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) payload that was sent to Mars. Together with other mission instruments, SEIS is also the first Mars exploration instrument that was taken off the deck of the lander, and placed on the surface of Mars. Thus, the Martian seismometer has a dome, shielding it against heat, wind and dust on Mars. See the photo below of the InSight lander, showing deployment of the SEIS dome, on the Maritan surface, at the onset of the mission in 2018, and the (dustless) solar panels on each side of the lander.

InSight is an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. The mission’s robotic spacecraft, launched on May 5, 2018 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, on an Atlas V launch system, landed on November 26, 2018, at the Elysium Planitia site, straddling the Martian equator. The InSight spacecraft was launched with two CubeSats, called Mars Cube One or MarCOs. Briefcase-size satellites that went into orbit behind the Insight Space capsule, and that were designed to relay communication about the Insight spacecraft, upon entry, descent, and landing on the Martian surface.

The scientific purposes of the InSight mission were twofold: 1. Understanding the formation and evolution of Mars, and 2. Determining the level of tectonic activity on Mars. Thus, the InSight mission was the first mission designed to study the inner core of planet Mars, formed 4.5 billion years ago, and its vital signs: pulse (seismic activity), temperature (heat flow), and reflexes (precision tracking).

Using radio frequencies, the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) antennas were designed to track the exact position of the InSight lander on Mars. The RISE instruments reflected back the signal sent from Earth to the lander, thus also determining the exact position of Mars. In turn, tracking the position of Mars was designed to calculate how much the planet Mars wobbles, as it orbits the sun. A calculation intended to bring further insight into the composition and structure of the Mars core, particularly the question of whether the Mars core is solid or liquid.

The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) was designed to burrow, almost 16 feet deep into the surface of Mars, to measure heat flow, from the core to the surface of Mars. However, the instrument malfunctioned, due to the unanticipated differences in Martian soil properties, which prevented the tool from boring into the soil, to reach any depth.

Weather instruments, the Temperature and Winds for InSight (TWINS) suite, onboard the InSight lander, also relayed meteorological data from Mars (1).

The May 4th marsquake was recorded on the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the InSight Lander mission. A mission scheduled to end in December 2022, due to dwindling power supply, unrenewed by the solar panels, now thickly covered with Martian soil dust. The Youtube video below shows a seismograph and sonification of the signals recorded on May 4th, on Mars, using the Mars Insight lander seismometer.  

Note

(1) The SEIS and HP3 instruments were essentially provided by the European Space Agency, bringing together the French Aerospace Agency, (CNES), the Institut de Physique du Globe de l'Université de Paris (IPGP), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the German Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), as well as the Imperial College (in the UK) and the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika. The RISE instruments were provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).

Reference
NASA Insight Lander Mission
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

NASA’s Insight records monster quake on Mars
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9185/nasas-insight-records-monster-quake-on-mars/

NASA Mars Insight Mission: The Instruments
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/spacecraft/instruments/summary/

NASA Mars Insight Mission: The Instruments - RISE
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/spacecraft/instruments/rise/

NASA NASA Mars Insight Mission: The Instruments – SEIS
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/spacecraft/instruments/seis/

NASA Mars Insight Mission: The Instruments – HP
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/spacecraft/instruments/hp3/

NASA Mars Weather
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/

Oh, patents! Oh, Ingenuity!

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

On schedule with no delays, Ingenuity ascended 10 feet above the Martian soil, hovered and turned 96 degrees, before landing on the same spot, on Mars, sending back a first picture (below) of its own shadow. Ingenuity is a small space craft helicopter drone that made history, on April 19, 2021, as the first controlled (un-manned) flight on another planet, some 180 million miles away from planet Earth. Ingenuity’s flight was also performed 118 years after the first airplane, flown by the Wright brothers, on December 17, 1903, took off and safely landed at Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina. This is the reason why the actual site on Mars, where Ingenuity took its first flight, is now named the Wright Brother’s Field. Indeed, Ingenuity’s flight is also a historic event on more counts than one.

Ingenuity landed on Mars, tucked inside the Perseverance Rover’s belly, on February 18, 2021. The small helicopter was deployed on April 3^rd, unfolding from a stowed frangi-bolted horizontal position, to a vertical position on the ground, from inside the rover’s belly, once the Perseverance hatch unlatched and dropped to the ground to release the space craft. Then, after the Perseverance Rover drove past the deployed space helicopter, uncovering it’s delivered payload, Ingenuity had to be solar charged and all systems verified. Finally, once in receipt of its first flight instructions, the little space craft was able to take off and land, completing its first flight (see video footage below). All of which pre-flight sequences were fired on Mars via remote-control from Earth, with a 20 minute delay. 

However, even before Ingenuity could land or fly on Mars, the little space helicopter had to be built to specification that would resist the long voyage from Earth to Mars. In other words it had to be built to:

•        survive launching onto space with 80G* vibration load
•        survive  a 7-month trip complete with radiation
•        survive 9G* vibration load upon entry in the Martian atmosphere

(*) gravitational constant

Ingenuity also had to be built to specification of the Martian atmosphere which is both much thinner than on Earth, and more oxidizing. The density of Martian atmosphere is actually 1% that of air on Earth. Martian gravity is also 38% that of gravity on Earth, which makes everything much lighter. Still, because of how thin the air is on Mars, Ingenuity had to be built very light. Thus, Ingenuity was designed to weigh less than four pounds (12 kgs), with blades each weighing 35 grams (equal to 6 quarters). The helicopter blades were designed stacked for stowing purposes. The blades rotate at 2300 to 2900 rpm (rotations per minute), which is 5 times faster than regular helicopter blades, rotating at 500 rpm.

Because remote control from Earth has a 20-minute delay, sequences of instructions are sent, which are then supplemented with data from a suite of sensors required for autonomous blade control, including data captured from accelerometer, gyrometer, camera, altimeter and inclinometer. Ingenuity is also equipped with insulated, rechargeable cellphone size batteries, operating to keep the space helicopter warm enough during the average -90 degrees F temperatures on Mars.

Ingenuity’s flight is an engineering mission designed to showcase that a drone-like space craft can fly outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Ingenuity has no scientific payload to carry out experiments. The purpose of the mission is to obtain engineering data in view of informing future designs. Ingenuity will also carry out longer, and more daring, missions on Mars, exploring places inaccessible to the Perseverance Rover, in search of telltale signs of biological life that may have existed, billions of years ago, on Mars.

Cheers to all the resourcefulness built into Ingenuity!

Video of Ingenuity's first flight, taken by the Perseverance Mastercam Z 

with zoom-in replay. 

References

Staff (April 19 2021) First video of NASA Ingenuity Mars helicopter in flight   https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25828/first-video-of-nasas-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-in-flight/

Staff (April 17 2021) NASA to attempt first controlled flight on Mars as soon as Monday   https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8919/nasa-to-attempt-first-controlled-flight-on-mars-as-soon-as-monday/

Staff (March 23, 2021) NASA Ingenuity Mars helicopter prepares for first flight https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8896/nasa-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-prepares-for-first-flight/

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Mission: Unbelievable!

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

 The perfectly planned, and so far, flawlessly executed 2020, NASA-led, Perseverance Rover, robotic explorer mission to Mars, stands on the shoulders of many giants that dared to stumble. In other words, nothing quite compares to the treat that NASA offered to the world, on Feb 18th, 2021. Since 1960, when the first Soviet Marsnik1 probe was launched, and failed to reach Earth orbit, many essentially Soviet and US-led missions, as well as Japanese, Indian, European Space Agency, Chinese, and most recently United Arab Emirate (UAE) missions, have been launched (NASA TimeLine; NASA Chronology). Mars exploration missions, such as deep space probes, orbiters mapping the Martian environment, landers on Martian soil, rovers, robotic explorers, and the latest hybrid aircraft-spacecraft Ingenuity, many of which failed. Missions that failed to launch, to orbit, to detach, to enter the Martian atmosphere, to communicate with Earth, or otherwise that missed their targets. Fortunately, however, the missions failed not without significantly informing both the theory and practice of space exploration, and its connected domains in engineering, physics, chemistry, astronomy, robotics, informatics, plus more.

Perhaps then, in light of an international time-line history of Mars exploration fraught with failures, that the name "Perseverance" of the 2020 mission Rover, acquires higher significance, next to all the hurdles of the COVID-19 pandemic (NASA Chronology). In any event, it certainly explains the NASA scientists’ disappointment-defense mantra: “We get what we get and we don’t get upset.."(NASA Press Conference Feb. 22, 2021) A mantra that perhaps also uncovers the true vulnerability of working with such data magnitude, scale and complexity, considering after all, that the 2020 mission finally worked “to an unbelievably perfect T”, with footage so awesome that many folks find it truly hard to walk away from their viewing screens.

Actually, Mars is a very solicited planet in 2021. Aside from the US NASA Perseverance Rover mission, together with the Ingenuity aircraft tucked inside its belly, several spacecraft are already orbiting, or exploring Mars (NASA Perseverance). Specifically, the US rovers Curiosity and Insight continue to operate on Mars, and six orbiters (three US, two European and one Indian) are observing Mars (Associated Press, 2020; NASA Insight; NASA Curiosity). 

Additionally, no less than two new Mars exploration missions were also launched, at about the same time as the US Perseverance Rover mission on July 30th, 2020. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) orbiter mission called Amal (“Hope” in Arabic) was launched on July 15th, 2020, from the Tanegashima Space Center, in Japan. The Amal orbiter mission, controlled in Dubai, is designed to monitor global Martian weather (Barrett, A., 2020). Whereas, the China-led Probe, first-of-its-kind-combination orbiter-lander-rover mission, designated “Tianwen” (Questions for Heaven in Chinese), was launched on July 23rd, 2020, from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan, China. The Chinese probe successfully started orbiting Mars on February 10th, 2021, with a perigee of about 400 kilometers, and a circling period of 10 days. The Chinese lander, together with its rover payload, will detach from the orbiter some time in May or June 2021, for entry into the Martian Atmosphere. The anticipated touchdown site is the Utopia Planitia Crater. The lander will unfurl a ramp, for the still un-named Chinese rover to roll out, and begin exploration (Stein, 2020).

All three missions, the US Perseverance robotic explorer, the UAE Amal Probe orbiter, and the China TianWen  Probe, combination orbiter-lander-rover,  launched in the summer 2020, were taking advantage of a favorable alignment of Earth and Mars, which only occurs every 26 months (Associated Press, 2020; Child, 2020; Lemonick, 2019).  An alignment, which essentially makes the travel time shorter, and entry into the Martian atmosphere easier.

Before safely touching down on Mars, exactly as planned, on February 18th, 2021, the NASA Perseverance Rover, together with the Ingenuity aircraft tucked beneath it, survived an imagination-defying, 300-million mile journey. A perilous journey, beginning with takeoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida, inside a spacecraft capsule, onboard an Atlas C-451 rocket (NASA - Launch). Takeoff was shortly followed by separation of the capsule from the rocket, and a 7-month solar-powered cruise through space, at a speed of approx. 26,900 mph (NASA - Cruise). A cruise culminating in the most intense part of the journey, consisting in the 7-minute, scorching temperature, 9G vibration Entry into the Martian atmosphere, Descent and Landing of the spacecraft on Martian soil (NASA - Landing; EDL phase). An EDL phase that included such critical maneuvers as cruise stage separation, Martian atmospheric entry at 12,500 mph, with a dramatic heat peak measured at 2370 degrees Fahrenheit (1300 degrees Celsius) caused by massive speed desceleration to 1000 mph, using Martian atmosphere, followed by parachute deployment, separation of the heat shield and aeroshell protection, firing of the descent stage retro-rockets, and separation from the descent stage to touchdown (see image below), most of which was captured on video camera, in otherwise unbelievable, mesmerizing clarity (NASA JPL - Simulated EDL video; NASA (non-simulated) Video - Descent & Touchdown).

  The below image shows a (non-simulated) top-down view, taken from the retro-rocket powered descent stage. The top-down view shows the Perseverance Rover being lowered onto Martian soil, using bridles, for touchdown exactly on the Jezero Crater, some 300 million miles away. The umbilical cord also visible is the data cable, sending information back and forth to the descent stage, including captured video data, from which this still was extracted.

Reference

Associated Press (July 13, 2020) Missions to Mars: U.S., Mars: U.S., China, UAE prepare to send spacecraft to the red planet  https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-13/us-china-uae-send-spacecraft-to-mars

Barrett, A. (July 20, 2020) UAS Mars mission 'Hope Probe' launches successfully.   https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/uae-mars-mission-hope-probe-launches-successfully/

Child, D. (Feb. 02-2021) Space race: UAE, US and Chinese missions prepare to explore Mars https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/2/8/space-race-uae-us-and-chinese-missions-prepare-to-explore-mars

Lemonick, S. (Juy 21, 2019) Three rovers will head to mars in 2020. Here’s what you need to know about their chemical missions. Astrochemisty Society.   https://cen.acs.org/physical-chemistry/astrochemistry/3-rovers-head-Mars-2020/97/i2 9 

NASA Mars Exploration time line (1964 - 2016)  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars-exploration/timeline/

NASA History Division - A chronology of Mars exploration (1960 – 2016)   https://history.nasa.gov/marschro.htm

NASA - Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission Overview   https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/overview/

NASA - Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission Launch  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/launch/

NASA - Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission Cruise   https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/cruise/

NASA - Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission Landing   https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/

NASA – MARS Entry, Descent and Landing   https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/entry-descent-landing/

NASA JPL Video Simulation - Perseverance's Entry Descent and Landing   https://youtu.be/M4tdMR5HLtg

NASA - Mars Curiosity Rover  https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/home/

NASA – Mars Insight Mission   https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

NASA - 6 things to know about NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/6-things-to-know-about-nasas-ingenuity-mars-helicopter

NASA (April 3, 2020) NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Gets Its Wheels and Air Brakes  https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasas-perseverance-mars-rover-gets-its-wheels-and-air-brakes

NASA – Press Conference Transacript – Febraury 22, 2021 Perseverance Rover searches for life on Mars.  https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/nasa-press-conference-transcript-february-22-perseverance-rover-searches-for-life-on-mars

NASA Video (non-simulated) - Perseverance descent and touchdown    https://youtu.be/4czjS9h4Fpg

NASA reinventing the wheel   https://www.nasa.gov/specials/wheels/

NASA Perseverance Rover Wheels (specs)  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/wheels/

Stein, V. (Feb. 7, 2020)Tianwen-1: China's first Mars mission   https://www.space.com/tianwen-1.html#:~:text=Tianwen%2D1%20is%20China's%20first,of%20the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic  

Interlude - NASA's 2021 Mastcam-Z landing site views

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Sometimes, nothing could be farther from the truth than the old adage:  “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Consider, for example, the NASA 2021 MastCam-Z views of the landing site from the Perseverance Rover. In stark contrast to the clarity of the most recent images captured on Mars, and what appears like "a beautiful day on a very far away planet", it is impossible to imagine an environment as inhospitable as the one that actually exists on planet Mars. 

A beautiful sol: MARS 2021 wide-angle view of landing site from Rover Mastcam-Z

Succinctly, the temperature on Mars is extremely cold (on average -80^◦F, a temperature only suitable for storing Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines). Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s, made up mostly of carbon dioxide (CO2), argon (Ar) and nitrogen (N2), with very little oxygen, which means that it is not possible to breathe Martian air. Devoid of a magnetic field, the surface of Mars is constantly bombarded by solar and galactic radiation, which is lethal to humans. Martian soil is also unsuitable for plants. There are no minerals or water (except at the Martian south pole, and in small quantities, as vapor in the atmosphere). Any liquid water is extremely salty.  All of which is completely invisible in the mesmerizing images taken 300 million miles away, and beamed back to Earth (e.g., like the view included above).

What might follow, considering what is already known about Mars’ extreme environmental conditions, is why continue exploring this planet?  Why, of all possible projects, defy the evidently, incredibly hostile, and terribly dangerous environment for a manned mission?  Perhaps more bluntly, why spend so much money on sending the most advanced technology to a place termed a “hellhole” (Stirone, 2021), when so much of planet Earth begs desperately for both financing and solutions?  Indeed, this is precisely how Jacqui Goddard, journalist from The Times of London posed the question, on behalf of her many non-scientific readers, on Feb. 22, 2021, during the NASA Press Conference, presenting recently edited Entry, Deployment and Landing (EDL) footage, and landing site images from Mars:

..what is the point of spending all this money to go to another planet and explore it? Sometimes that’s not even a question, it’s a statement. There are cynics out there. Can you say why we explore and how does humanity benefit from you finding out what you find out and doing what you do?  [NasaPress Conference Transcript 01-27-28]

Two of the NASA spokespersons responded quite graciously to this question: Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and Matt Wallace, Perseverance Deputy Project Manager. They both agreed on pointing out that 1. NASA’s far-out budget represents just a fraction of the budget spent on planet Earth, and 2. The scientific inquiry that drives NASA missions also has very practical consequences. The example cited was the Global Positioning System (GPS), which was developed by NASA within the context of satellite research, also under the auspices of the Space Agency. Intersections with the history of the wheel could also have been cited. Short of moving humanity backward a few steps, NASA research is precisely where many solutions are found, even humanitarian ones. In some forsaken places, for example, where there are no street names or addresses, GPS localization is the only way of delivering goods and services, or of finding people.

The images from Mars may not tell all the truth, but perhaps that this sort of omission might be completely forgiven, considering the beauty of the images, and most importantly, just the fact that they might be seen, at all–for free, in the name of inquiry.

 References

Goddard, J. (Feb. 25, 2021) Why the billions spent on the Mars Perseverance mission will pay off. The Times.  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-the-billions-spent-on-the-mars-perseverance-mission-will-pay-off-mcms8wq2w

NASA - Mars  https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/

NASA – Space Radiation elements (HRP)   https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/elements/radiation/miniseries

NASA Transcript for Press Conference on February 22, 2021.   https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/nasa-press-conference-transcript-february-22-perseverance-rover-searches-for-life-on-mars

Stirone, S. (Feb. 26, 2021) Mars is a Hellhole - The Atlantic.   https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/mars-is-no-earth/618133/  

Ten things to know about Mars.   https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/#otp_ten_things_to_know_about_mars

Tango Delta! Perseverance Rover touchdown

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

On February 18, 2021, the six-wheeled Perseverance Rover vehicle landed on the Jezero Crater, on planet Mars, within a few feet of the targeted spot, 330 million miles away from planet Earth, after departing, on July 30th, 2020, inside a cruise shell, attached to an Atlas V-451 rocket, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. The Perseverance Rover, affectionately called “Percy” is a 2,263-pound (1,026-kilogram), car-size, robotic geologist and astrobiologist, designed to investigate, for the next two years, the geology of the Jezero Crater, an ancient lakebed and river delta region, searching for signs of ancient microbial life (NASA Press Release 02-8-2021).

The Perseverance Rover is equipped with a payload of sophisticated instrument suites, together with an Advanced Sample Collection System. The instrumentation suites include:

• The MarsEntry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) sensor suite, which collected data on the atmosphere, during entry.
• The Terrain-Relative Navigation system, which guided the engine during its descent.
• The  Mastcam-Z, two zoomable science cameras on Perseverance’s remote sensing mast, designed to create high-resolution panoramas of the Martian landscape.
• The SuperCam, using a pulsed laser to study the chemistry of rocks and sediment, also equipped with its own microphone.
• The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) used in  conjunction with Sherloc (below) to analyze the elementary composition of Martian rock samples 
• The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument suite on board is designed to detect minerals and molecules in the search for ancient life.
• The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), designed to manufacture oxygen out of Mars thin air.
• The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instrument, with sensors on the mast and body of the Rover, is designed to provide key info on Mars weather, dust and climate.
• The Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX), designed to collect data to determine how the layers of soil on Mars stack up.
• The Mars Ingenuity Helicopter,  currently charging on the engine’s belly.  

 On February 22, 2021, NASA released an edited version (included below) of the extraordinarily clear, hi-definition color video footage, of the vehicle’s Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL). The 3-minute NASA Youtube video shows the deployment of the parachute in a bottom-up view from under the parachute, separation of the heat shield covering the spacecraft,  and the slow retro-rocket propelled descent guided by the descent stage, all the way to touchdown on Martian soil, in a top-down view. The Official NASA edited footage is amazingly clear, considering the distance. In comparison with previous mission footage from planet Mars, which used to be colored in the editing room, the Perseverance Rover mission footage is the first hi-definition full-color footage streamed from the Red planet.  Indeed the images are stunningly clear. (NASA Press release, 02-22-2021)

The EDL video cam system functioned upon entry into the Martian atmosphere, starting at about 7 miles (11 km) above the surface of Mars. One camera, on top of the backshell, protecting the Rover, was looking up at the parachute. One camera on the retrorocket decent stage was looking down. Two cameras were on the Rover: one camera was looking up at the descent stage, and one camera was looking down at Martian soil, once the heatshield had separated. The image  included (to the right) illustrates the Mars 2020 entry, descent and landing camera suite with camera position, respectively on the backshell, descent stage and Rover.

Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video)

https://youtu.be/4czjS9h4Fpg  (released 22 -02-2021)

While the EDL camera suite was designed to give viewers multiple views of the EDL, it is perhaps much more difficult to fathom is the actual violence of the supersonic parachute deployment, that scientists report. The Perseverance Rover was traveling at approximately 12,500 mph (20,100 kph) upon entering the upper Mars atmosphere. Approximately 230 seconds later the parachute deployed almost instantaneously (in 1 second) from a compressed 18 x 26 inch (46 x 66 cm) cylinder, into a fully inflated 70.5 foot-wide (21.5 meter-wide) canopy, generating tens of thousands of pounds of force to slow the Rover’s speed. During the NASA press conference, presenting the EDL footage, NASA scientists noted that the parachute deployed with no tangled strings, which is amazing since the deployment happened in just 1 second, at supersonic speed (i.e.; at a speed exceeding the speed of sound). 

Stay tuned for more! The Perseverance Rover is powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG, provided by the Department of Energy in partnership with NASA.  Safe landing on Mars is only the beginning of the Mars Perserverance mission, and all the discoveries it promises to offer.

References

Press Release  21-021 (Feb. 22, 2021) NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover provides front-row seat to landing, first audio recording of red planet.   https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-mars-perseverance-rover-provides-front-row-seat-to-landing-first-audio

Press Release 21-018 (Feb. 18, 2021) Touchdown! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Safely Lands on Red Planet.  https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/touchdown-nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-safely-lands-on-red-planet

NASA – Entry Descent and Landing (EDL).   https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/entry-descent-landing/#Terrain-Relative-Navigation

Simulated EDL https://youtu.be/tITni_HY1Bk

The Cameras on the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/cameras/

NASA - Power and thermal systems (MMRTG).   https://rps.nasa.gov/power-and-thermal-systems/power-systems/

NASA – The Extraordinary Sample-Gathering System of NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover.   https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/the-extraordinary-sample-gathering-system-of-nasas-perseverance-mars-rover

Barnett, A (Oct. 8, 2020) NASA's Perseverance Rover Will Peer Beneath Mars' Surface (RIMFAX).  https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-will-peer-beneath-mars-surface

NASA (May 26,2020)- The Detective aboard  NASA’s Perseverance Rover (SHERLOC).   https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/the-detective-aboard-nasas-perseverance-rover

NASA (May 1, 2020) -  NASA’s Perseverance Rover will look at Mars through these eyes  (MastCamX).   https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8663/nasas-perseverance-rover-will-look-at-mars-through-these-eyes/

NASA (Sept. 22, 2020) - NASA's New Mars Rover Will Use X-Rays to Hunt Fossils (PIXL).   https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-new-mars-rover-will-use-x-rays-to-hunt-fossils

NASA  - MOXIE  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/moxie/

NASA – MEDA  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/meda/

NASA – Moxie for scientists.   https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/moxie/for-scientists/

NASA (April 29, 2020) - Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RQWv1ybsjM

NASA (Jan 27, 2021) -   NASA’s Perseverance 22 days from landing.   https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-perseverance-rover-22-days-from-mars-landing   

COVID19 - A little star was born this day!

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

“Millions of mothers* all over the world embarked on a journey of parenthood in the world as it was. They now must prepare to bring a life into the world as it has become – a world where expecting mothers are afraid to go to health centres for fear of getting infected, or missing out on emergency care due to strained health services and lockdowns,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. “It is hard to imagine how much the coronavirus pandemic has recast motherhood.”

  

Note

The birth of 116 million babies for an order of magnitude, according to estimates for the 9-month period extending from March 11, 2020, the date on which the pandemic was officially declared, through to December 16, 2020. 

Reference

Sidhu, S. (May 7, 2020) Pregnant mothers and babies born during COVID-19 pandemic threatened by strained health systems and disruptions in services.
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/pregnant-mothers-and-babies-born-during-covid-19-pandemic-threatened-strained-health