NASA is only about a week out from landing a brand new robot on Mars' ground. Hence, we're going to be able to examine what it's like to explore another planet for the first time.
Perseverance is expected to land on Thursday, Feb. 18, in Jezero Crater, being the first artificial entity since the Mars Insight lander in 2018 and the first rover since Curiosity landed in 2012 on the Martian planet.
The landing is not, however, going to be easy. When it reaches the Martian atmosphere, the ship can fly at about 12,000 miles per hour. The atmosphere is so thin that parachutes operate better there than they do on Earth. Wind speed variations and the volume of dust in the atmosphere are highly difficult to forecast and can impact the landing phase. And you've got to carefully put your 2,200-pound rover down sufficiently so as not to smash it.
Yeah, and Mars is so far out, on top of all that, that there is a contact gap of up to 20 minutes, so in real time you can't control it. You need to configure the craft to land itself, because you can't do much to save it until the descent starts. In a time that engineers term the "seven minutes of terror," you can only wait and watch as your precious spaceship hurtles through the planet's surface.
Gregorio Villar's real-life work supervises this nail-biting nightmare. Villar is a systems engineer on the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team for the Perseverance rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
How to Watch Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover's Landing
In almost three years, NASA is expected to land its first rover on Mars as Perseverance lands on the Jezero Crater. A special Student Livestream will launch at 9:30 a.m. PT (12:30 p.m. ET); the landing transmission will begin at 11:15 a.m. PT (2:15 p.m. ET).
Space lovers will be able to view the historical event from NASA's official YouTube channel from the safety of their homes. (A Spanish-language stream will also be provided by NASA here) While the Perseverance rover is fitted with cameras and microphones, due to data delays during its descent, NASA will not provide a live feed of the actual landing of the rover.
That said, NASA will also be providing live feeds from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, from its mission control center. And, soon after arrival, Perseverance would be able to relay low-resolution photographs of Mars' surface. The high-tech rover's cameras and microphones can relay data showing what it feels and looks like to settle on another world.
Fingers Crossed For a Smooth, Safe Landing
It would not be Villar's first time with a scary landing as the landing day comes on Feb. 18. He was also involved in the landing of Curiosity in 2012. Back then, he was new to the project and to JPL. Having spent seven and a half years working on Perseverance's EDL method, he admits he is much more stressed now than he was last time.
"Everything is so much more complicated than I thought back in Curiosity days," he told Digital Trends. "It's nerve-wracking because it's such a complicated system where anything could go wrong."
Yet he appreciated his co-workers' commitment and diligent work. He stated they were sure they had done everything they could to give the mission the greatest chance of completion.
Many Missions Coming to Mars
As three different Mars missions reach the red planet, February is full of nail-biting moments of reality. The Hope spacecraft, led by the United Arab Emirates, has reached Mars orbit successfully. China's Tianwen-1 and the US's Mars 2020 craft are both headed with orbiters and rovers for the red planet.
But, as you would be told by an engineer, space is never easy. So, the NASA folks would be almost as nervous as their UAE and Chinese colleagues.
That said, the US mission is the last of the three expected to come, meaning the Americans should, for now at least, sit back and rest and watch the others go.
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