After nearly 300 million miles (470 million km), NASA’s Perseverance rover completes its journey to Mars on February 18, 2021. But, to reach the surface of the Red Planet, it has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing.
The mission uses technological innovations already demonstrated successfully, especially for entry, descent, and landing (EDL). Like NASA’s Curiosity rover, the Mars 2020 spacecraft uses a guided entry, descent, and landing system. The landing system on Mars 2020 mission includes a parachute, a descent vehicle, and an approach called a “skycrane maneuver” for lowering the rover on a tether to the surface during the final seconds before landing.
This type of landing system provides the ability to land a very large, heavy rover on the surface of Mars in a more precise landing area than was possible before Curiosity’s landing. Mars 2020 takes things one step further. It adds new entry, descent, and landing (EDL) technologies, such as Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN). This sophisticated navigation system allows the rover to detect and avoid hazardous terrain by diverting around it during its descent through the Martian atmosphere. A microphone allows engineers to analyze entry, descent, and landing. It might also capture sounds of the rover at work, which would provide engineers with clues about the rover’s health and operations, and would be a treat to hear.
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12 Comments
The distance to Mars is approximately 30 to 79 million miles not 300 million. Just saying..
You are correct and the article should have mentioned that fact. Traveling to another plant is different than crossing the street where 100 yards is 100 yards. The planets are moving at different speeds and directions frequently the most efficient travel path isn’t a straight line.
They should pound the lander into the surface nearby, so they can study the impact crater when it is fresh.
What happens to the descent vehicle after it releases the rover?
It returns to Earth and is recycled for another mission!!1!
Will the flying drone have a mission once it drops the rover on Mars? Will it continue to fly over Mars taking videos and photos?
Ain’t it a metal planet that the dirt is red cause of rust and all? Why aren’t they using electromagnetic levitation to levitate and as source of traveling around the world plutonium seems to do the job right?a remote controlled nuke, so many drones available and we’re not flying Mars skies I mean WTF. Put plutonium to good use nuke Mars see if that doorbell is heard.
Wth are you talking about? I don’t even know where to begin with your comment. No, Mars is not made of metal. Just Google “Mars” and you can learn about all the cool things that you’re so misinformed about.
I love this science and technology and space news it’s very interesting and helpful and informative articles to me I learn more about things than I did in school there has been a lot of things changed since I graduated in 1980 so it amazing to me
When is the drone ready to rocket to mars?
You can’t fly in a straight line in space because of gravitational forces. Also the atmosphere on Mars is only twenty percent of the Earth’s and the wind speed is 200 mph so flying a drone at this time might not be possible. Also there might not be enough iron in the surface to support that type of levition. I did an experiment once with generating a levitation force. It worked for a couple second but I was never able to repeat the experiments. I was using counter wound torodial magnets. Check out some of the experiments on the Philidephia project. Tesla was involved with this. I thinkif a person could study him carefully and figure out his thought patterns, they could figure out what was going on with that experiment. This is a simplistic explanation so I suggest you follow up with your own research.
Who buccaneers those Stars