Agence France-PresseMar 11, 2021 10:08:00 IST
The pack of instruments called SuperCam aboard the Perseverance Mars rover has collected their first specimens in the hunt for a past life on the Red Planet, mission scientists said Wednesday. Returning to Earth will take years from this time of the rocks and soil it recovers “scientists take the Holy Grail of planetary exploration,” Jean-Yves le Gall, president of the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) France, which built the mobile theater hub, said it via YouTube broadcast. Perhaps these “pieces of Mars,” he said, “finally answer this interesting and fundamental question: was there ever life anywhere other than Earth?”
Persistence Rover launched on Martian ground by skycrane Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
After seven months in space, NASA’s Perseverance rover quietly landed on Martian ground last month and returned black-and-white images depicting the rocky fields of Jezero Crater, just north of the equator of Mars.
“SuperCam is an integral part of this astrobiology mission,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, vice president of NASA’s Science Mission Steering Group.
Mounted on the rover’s mast, the shoebox-sized gizmo is packed with spectrometers, a laser, and an audio recording device to study the chemistry, mineralogy, and molecular composition of Mars ’famous red surface.
The SuperCam laser can turn objects smaller than a pencil point from as far away as seven meters (20 feet) and lets you see spots outside the rover’s robotic arm reach.
“The laser is remarkably capable of wiping away surface dust, giving its instruments a clear view of the targets,” said Roger Wiens, an engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and chief SuperCam inspector.
The mission suffered severe misconduct before it was built, Scott Robinson told LANL, who said more than 500 engineers and scientists contributed to the project.
“The mast unit optics were destroyed in a freak accident just four months before delivery,” he explained. “The team scambled to pull additional parts together to rebuild the telescope from scratch.”
The accident happened as a blessing in shock.
Disaster freak
In repeating the unit, engineers discovered what Robinson described as a “Hubble-like” defect in the original mirror.
Shortly after the Hubble Space Telescope was unveiled in 1990, operators realized that the theatre’s main mirror had a mirror – later corrected – which affected the brightness of images.
Scientists believe that a river that flowed into a deep lake about 3.5 billion years ago, deposited sediment in a fan-shaped delta.
The rover is tasked with collecting more than two dozen rock and ground samples in seal tubs, to be sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for analysis.
In terms of SUV size and weight, Perseverance is equipped with a two-meter (seven-foot) artificial arm, 19 cameras, two microphones as well as other advanced instruments.
A small helicopter drone beneath it will attempt to make its first powered flight on another planet in a few weeks.
One instrument on board is designed to produce oxygen from the atmosphere of carbon dioxide to a large extent Mars, something that would greatly help humans live.
Perseverance is the fifth rover for setting down wheels on Mars, all from NASA. The feat was first performed in 1997.
Its main mission lasts a little over two years, but the rover could stay working much longer.