Mohawk valley astronomical society
mars super slueth by carol higgins
The arrival of February brings with it the happy news that winter is half over. But for planetary scientists, this month marks the exciting end of a seven-month, 300 million-mile voyage by three spacecraft, and the start of unique and ambitious missions to explore planet Mars. All three launched in July 2020 to take advantage of an alignment of Earth and Mars that occurs every 26 months, providing the fastest path to Mars. First to arrive is the Al Amal (Hope) orbiter on February 9. Developed and managed by the United Arab Emirates with help from U.S., Canadian, and other international partners, Hope is UAE’s first interplanetary mission. Onboard are three science packages: a high-resolution color camera, and an infrared and ultraviolet spectrometer. It will monitor and collect data about the layers of the atmosphere and weather to help researchers better understand climate dynamics such as dust storms and clouds, and the ongoing loss of atmospheric hydrogen and oxygen. On February 10, China’s Tianwen-1 Mars spacecraft arrives. It carries two main components: an orbiter, and a separate lander/rover combination that will be sent to the surface a few months later. The orbiter will serve as a relay station to send data back to Earth, and has seven science packages including two cameras, subsurface radar equipment, spectrometer, magnetometer, and several particle analyzers.
The lander/rover has two cameras, ground-penetrating radar, climate monitor, magnetic field detector, and mineral analyzers. The mission goals include lookSkycrane lowers Perseverance to Mars ing for subsurface water and investigating Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech the soil, geology, environment, and atmosphere of the planet. This is China’s second attempt to reach Mars, the first failed the Ingenuity Helicopter! It is small and to leave Earth orbit almost ten years ago. weighs wingspan Hanny’s Voorwerp. Imagefour Credit:pounds, NASA, ESA, with W. Keel,aGalaxy Zoo Teamof A successful Tianwen-1 mission would about four feet. It will only make short, 90 make significant contributions to the scisecond flights up to 15 feet in altitude but entific community. it will be the first time flight has been at And last but not least, the super sleuth tempted on another world. of them all arrives on February 18. That The February 18 landing is around day NASA’s Perseverance Rover attempts 3:30 p.m. (EST) and promises to be exa landing in an ancient river delta at the citing and nerve-wracking. Some refer to edge of Jezero Crater, the site of a lake the Entry, Descent, and Landing phase as about 3.5 billion years ago. Perseverance “seven minutes of terror” as we await a is the most sophisticated rover ever built, signal from the rover indicating it safely evolving from the accomplishments of touched down. First, its heat shield has to NASA’s four successful rovers. Its main survive a fiery descent through the Marmission is to search for signs of ancient tian atmosphere where temperatures will microbial life, learn about past environreach 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Then a ments, collect rock and “soil” samples for parachute has to sufficiently slow the vefuture retrieval, and run an experiment to hicle so the “sky crane” can deploy its caproduce oxygen from the atmosphere. bles and gently lower the rover to the surThe six-wheeled rover is the size of a face. It will take 11 minutes for its landing small car and carries a wide array of scistatus report to reach Earth. NASA will ence instruments. It has 19 cameras and cover the landing live, visit the https:// the science payload has seven major sysmars.nasa.gov/mars2020 website. Februtems; weather and dust analyzer, x-ray ary promises to be quite a busy month on spectrometer, ground-penetrating radar, Mars! spectrometers, lasers to search for organ Wishing you clear skies and good ic compounds, and two microphones. But health!• one of the most exciting experiments is
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