This next-generation version of Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument is located on Perseverance’s mast. Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | Full image and caption SuperCam’s laser looks like an eye on Perseverance’s mast. This can help spacecraft engineers design safe landings for future astronauts traveling to Mars. With MEDLI2, use sensors in the rover’s heat shield and back shell to better understand entry into the Martian atmosphere.Study how Mars weather could affect human explorers.With data from the MEDA instrument, study how atmospheric dust could affect future technology, including human life support systems.In the future, oxygen generated this way could be used by astronauts for rocket propellant and for breathing. With the MOXIE experiment, demonstrate a technology that converts carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen.NASA has also tasked the Mars 2020 team with a mission objective to prepare for future human exploration by conducting the following investigations: Keep these samples pristine, isolating them from Earth-sourced contaminants. Select and collect samples representing the geologic diversity of the Perseverance field site, focusing on materials with the highest potential to preserve signs of life and planetary evolution.Determine whether Perseverance’s landing site, Jezero Crater, could have supported microbial life in the distant past, and search for evidence that such ancient life may have left behind.Understand the geology of the field site explored by the Perseverance rover.To reach the first three goals, NASA has determined the following more specific science objectives for Perseverance: These efforts, detailed below, will feed into NASA’s plans for sending humans to Mars, with the Artemis program returning astronauts to the Moon as the first step. It carries technologies that could help land humans or equipment on the planet and even help produce rocket propellant and breathable oxygen. The Mars 2020 mission also looks ahead to the day when astronauts travel to Mars. As with the Moon samples returned by the Apollo missions, Mars samples would benefit future generations of scientists who will study them using advanced technology, some of which hasn’t been invented yet. Despite the immense technical capabilities of the rover’s science instruments, there are far more powerful laboratories and science tools on our planet than we could hope to send to Mars. This record can reveal when and where Mars had the ideal conditions for life.īut Perseverance is different: It’s the first Mars rover designed to collect samples that will one day be returned to Earth. Scientists can study rocks and sediment on the Martian surface to learn what environments once existed, whether and for how long liquid water was once present, and what the climate was like in the past. NASA has sent rovers, landers, and orbiters to the Red Planet to investigate that key astrobiological question. Life developed on Earth at that time, so could it also have developed on Mars? Both had liquid water at the surface both had magnetic fields to protect their surface from the Sun’s radiation. Why This Mission Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | Full image and captionīillions of years ago, Earth and Mars were more similar than they are today.
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