Perseverence on Mars

[Carole]

Perseverance viewed from its rocket cradle just before landing.



The American space agency has released an astonishing image sent back from Mars by its Perseverance rover.

It shows the robot heading down to the ground on Thursday to make its landing. It was acquired by the rocket cradle that placed the vehicle on the surface.


https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56133281

[The Thing]

That's such a cool shot.

[Carole]

Amazing video of the landing from Perseverence itself. 
You can watch the little symbols at the bottom to see what stage it is at.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC4wdD14VzE

[Rick]

Hero to Jezero: Perseverance, NASA's most advanced geologist rover, lands on Mars, beams back first pics

NASA just now successfully landed Perseverance, its largest and heaviest rover yet, on the surface of Mars in the Jezero Crater. The machine will conduct the ambitious mission to finding ancient microbial life on another planet.

"Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance has touched down on Mars," Swati Mohan, Navigation and Control Operations Lead of the Mars 2020 mission, said moments ago on NASA's live-streamed coverage of the landing, just before mission control erupted in applause.

After cruising though space for little over seven months, Perseverance entered its entry, descent, and landing stage, also fondly known at NASA as the seven minutes of terror.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/18/perseverance_landing/

[Rick]

NASA sends nuclear tank 293 million miles to Mars, misses landing spot by just five metres. Now watch its video

NASA successfully landed its fifth robotic rover on the surface of Mars just five metres from its target, the American space agency said after releasing footage of the historic landing.

As Perseverance plunged through the Martian atmosphere and shed its lower shell, its cameras were able to provide scientists with a view of what was going on above and below the vehicle. You can watch the drama unfold below as mission control recounts the various steps needed to slow the rover down from a whopping 5,300 metres per second to plonk it safely on the ground.

See the video

More: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/23/perseverance_landing_video/

[Rick]

The Descent of Perseverance

The Mars 2020 descent stage holding NASA's Perseverance rover can be seen falling through the Martian atmosphere, its parachute trailing behind, in this image taken on 18 February 2021. The ancient river delta, which is the target of the Perseverance mission, can be seen entering Jezero Crater from the left.

HiRISE was approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles) from Perseverance at the time of the image and traveling at about 3 kilometers per second (6,750 mph). The extreme distance and high speeds of the two spacecraft were challenging conditions that required precise timing and for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to both pitch upward and roll hard to the left so that Perseverance was viewable by HiRISE at just the right moment.

More: https://www.uahirise.org/releases/perseverance/

[Rick]

Here's a short interview with one of the scientists who'll be involved in the sample return part of the mission: https://soundcloud.com/user-492426953

[Rick]

'Dare mighty things': hidden message found on Nasa Mars rover parachute

nternet sleuths claim to have decoded a hidden message displayed on the parachute that helped Nasa's Perseverance Rover land safely on Mars last week. They claim that the phrase "Dare mighty things" – used as a motto by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory – was encoded on the parachute using a pattern representing letters as binary computer code.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/23/dare-mighty-things-hidden-message-found-on-nasa-mars-rover-parachute

[Rick]

5 Hidden Gems Are Riding Aboard NASA's Perseverance Rover

The symbols, mottos, and small objects added to the agency's newest Mars rover serve a variety of purposes, from functional to decorative.

More than halfway to the Red Planet, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover isn't just shuttling sophisticated science instruments and tubes to be filled with Earth-bound rock samples. It's carrying symbols, mottos, and objects that range from practical to playful – everything from meteorite fragments to chips carrying the names of 10.9 million people.

More: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/5-hidden-gems-are-riding-aboard-nasas-perseverance-rover

[Rick]

Here's another:  https://twitter.com/AlyshondraM/status/1363970174034927618

[Rick]

NASA's Perseverance Rover Gives High-Definition Panoramic View of Landing Site

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover got its first high-definition look around its new home in Jezero Crater on Feb. 21, after rotating its mast, or "head," 360 degrees, allowing the rover's Mastcam-Z instrument to capture its first panorama after touching down on the Red Planet on Feb 18. It was the rover's second panorama ever, as the rover's Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, also located on the mast, captured a 360-degree view on Feb. 20.

Mastcam-Z is a dual-camera system equipped with a zoom function, allowing the cameras to zoom in, focus, and take high-definition video, as well as panoramic color and 3D images of the Martian surface. With this capability, the robotic astrobiologist can provide a detailed examination of both close and distant objects.

More: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8873/nasas-perseverance-rover-gives-high-definition-panoramic-view-of-landing-site/

[Rick]

Nasa's Perseverance rover takes its first drive on Mars

The American space agency's (Nasa) Perseverance rover has wiggled its wheels and undertaken its first drive across the surface of Mars.

Pictures downloaded to Earth on Friday indicate the excursion was a short roll and turn.

More: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56297996

[Rick]

NASA's Perseverance Drives on Mars' Terrain for First Time

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars March 4, covering 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across the Martian landscape. The drive served as a mobility test that marks just one of many milestones as team members check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance. Once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, regular commutes extending 656 feet (200 meters) or more are expected.

More: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-drives-on-mars-terrain-for-first-time

[Rick]

Welcome to 'Octavia E. Butler Landing'

NASA has named the landing site of the agency's Perseverance rover "Octavia E. Butler Landing," after the science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. The landing location is marked with a star in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

More: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/welcome-to-octavia-e-butler-landing

[Rick]

Perseverance 360: Unusual Rocks and the Search for Life on Mars

APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210309.html

[NoelC]

Nice spot if you like rocks.

[Rick]

Out of this world: Listen to Perseverance rover fire its laser at Mars rocks as the wind whips around it

NASA released this week the first audio recordings captured by its six-wheeled nuclear-powered rover Perseverance in action, zapping rock samples as the Martian wind eerily whispers in the background..

The trundlebot left terra firma in July, and landed on the Red Planet last month. Since then, engineers have uploaded thousands of commands to test the rover's instruments in its new environment before it fully embarks on its mission to find signs of alien microbial life. This has included snapping pictures using its SuperCam and recording audio using its microphone.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/12/mars_laser_perseverance/

[Hugh]

How fantastic was this!  Full NASA briefing at the link below.  Go to 13:15 to see actual vid of flight.

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Watch-Online

Best

Hugh

[Rick]

Ingenuity – Earth's first aircraft to fly on another planet – take off on Mars

Ingenuity has successfully performed a solar-powered autonomous flight on Mars, NASA confirmed on Monday.

The dual-bladed helicopter took off from the Jezero Crater at 0734 UTC, marking the first time in history an Earth-built aircraft has flown in skies away from Sol d. NASA has now named the patch of Martian surface that Ingenuity hovered over as the Wright Brothers Field, after human flight pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/20/ingenuity_mars_takeoff/

[Rick]

Mars helicopter plagued with Log4j bug overcomes network glitch to confirm new flight record

NASA has revealed that Ingenuity – the experimental helicopter sent to Mars with the Perseverance Rover – has clocked up a whole half-hour of flight in the red planet's meanly thin atmosphere.

The 'copter passed the thirty-minute mark during its 17th flight, on December 5.

But NASA was unsure of the craft's status because of what the space agency has described as "an unexpected cutoff to the in-flight data stream as the helicopter descended toward the surface at the conclusion of its flight".

More: https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/16/ingenuity_mars_helicopter_log4j/

[Rick]

Analysis of sounds captured by Perseverance rover reveals speed of sound on the Red Planet

An international team of researchers analyzing the sounds captured by the Perseverance rover has determined the speed of sound on Mars. Baptiste Chide, with Los Alamos National Laboratory, gave a presentation at this year's 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outlining the findings by the team.

The Perseverance rover landed successfully on the surface of Mars a little more than a year ago, and since that time, has been rolling around, studying the landscape with a host of cameras and sensors. Perseverance has also been outfitted with a microphone, which allowed the rover to beam back the first sounds ever heard from a distant world --

More: https://phys.org/news/2022-03-analysis-captured-perseverance-rover-reveals.html

[Rick]

NASA's 161-second helicopter tour of Martian terrain

On Friday NASA released footage of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying further and faster than ever before.

The film recorded during Ingenuity's 25th flight on April 8 when it flew 704 meters at up to 5.5 meters per second.

Video: https://youtu.be/thk4Rha-fTk

More: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/ingenuity_161s_martian_flight/

[Rick]

Mars helicopter needs patch to fly again after sensor failure

The Mars Ingenuity helicopter is in need of a patch to work around a failed sensor before another flight can be attempted.

The helicopter's inclinometer failed during a recommissioning effort ahead of the 29th flight. The sensor is critical as it will reposition the craft nearer to the Perseverance rover for communication purposes.

Although not required during flight, the inclinometer (which consists of two accelerometers) is used to measure gravity prior to spin-up and takeoff. "The direction of the sensed gravity is used to determine how Ingenuity is oriented relative to the downward direction," said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter chief pilot.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/07/ingenuity_patch/

[Rick]

Perseverance rover drops off first sample tube on surface of Mars

A titanium tube that looks a bit like a steampunk telescope has been dropped off by the plucky Perseverance rover, stuffed with a Mars rock sample that NASA astrobiologists are hoping might reveal traces of ancient microbial life.

But before the most difficult part – sending spacecraft from Earth to Mars to collect the sealed samples and return them to Earth for analysis by 2033 – the team had to make sure the multibillion-dollar mission didn't shoot itself in the foot by crushing the tube beneath the rover's wheels.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/22/perseverance_sample_tube_drop_nasa/

[Carole]

I remember the talk we had on this by Zoom.  I asked the question as to how they will know where the samples have been dropped when they try to find them.  The answer was a definite "we will know where they are".

Carole

[Rick]

Perseverance Left Scientists a Present on Mars, But They Can't Open It Until 2033

The rover has been drilling and scooping since shortly after landing, squirreling away rocks and sand into special tubes for transport.

It dropped its first load near a place called "Three Forks" this week. That tube contains bits of igneous rock it found in January of this year.

It wasn't just a "drop and run". Mission engineers had to make sure the tube landed safely. So, they did it slowly. First, Perseverance pulled the container out of its belly.

Then it looked everything over with a camera before dropping the tube down 90 centimeters onto the surface.

Then another image showed mission engineers the sample was safely in position on its side for easy pickup.

More: https://www.sciencealert.com/perseverance-left-scientists-a-present-on-mars-but-they-cant-open-it-until-2033

[Rick]

Mars helicopter phones home after 63 days of silence

NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has phoned home, more than 60 days after last establishing contact.

Ingenuity's last flight was on April 26, when the rotorcraft took to Martian skies for 139 seconds and hopped 363 meters.

The copter's role is to fly ahead of the Perseverance Rover and scout any potential obstacles or items of interest. On Flight 52, that meant the flying machine landed over a hill, in a location from which it did not enjoy line of sight to the rover.

Perseverance has since caught up, crested the hill, and on June 28 was able to see Ingenuity and re-establish contact.

NASAs assessment of the copter's status – based on the little data it has shared – "indicates all is well with the first aircraft on another world."

More: https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/ingenuity_mars_helicopter_contact_established/

[Rick]

After Three Years on Mars, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends

NASA's history-making Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has ended its mission at the Red Planet after surpassing expectations and making dozens more flights than planned. While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing and it is no longer capable of flight.

More: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends

Also: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/nasas-mars-helicopter-has-made-its-last-flight-above-the-red-planet/

[Rick]

72 flights later and a rotor blade short, Mars chopper loses its fight with physics

A little more light is being shed on the fate of NASA's Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, thanks to fresh images snapped by the Perseverance rover.

After an expectation-busting 72 flights over almost three years, the helicopter was finally retired in January 2024 when NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) found rotor damage following a quick up-and-down flight to check the helicopter's systems.

NASA confirmed that Ingenuity was upright and in communication with ground controllers but would fly no more. Images released at the time indicated that the tip of at least one rotor blade had suffered damage. Subsequent images showed a missing upper rotor blade, however, the pictures were frustratingly low resolution.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/26/nasa_ingenuity_rotor_damage/
(...and see https://twitter.com/stim3on/status/1761715831472291996 )