- 2785 - MARS - Jezero Crator exploration? - On July 30, 2020 NASA launched its most sophisticated and ambitious spacecraft to Mars in the search for signs of life beyond Earth. The spacecraft is aptly named “Perseverance Rover“.
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-------------------------- 2785 - MARS - Jezero Crator exploration?
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- This 2020 launchwill be the third launch to Mars this month, following the UAE’s “Hope” and China’s “Tianwen-1” spacecraft.
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- NASA’s Perseverance will look for signatures of ancient life preserved in Mars rocks. This rover will collect rock samples that will be brought back to Earth, where they can be scrutinized in laboratories for decades to come.
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- Mars is one the few destinations in the Solar System that has had conditions suitable for life as we know it. There is a chance that Perseverance will collect the sample from Mars that answers the question: “Are we alone in the universe?”
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- This question is especially relevant right now. During the coronavirus pandemic, the mission has remarkably stayed on track for launch in spite of disruptions and delays, and we have been reminded that life on Earth is vulnerable and precious.
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- On February 18, 2021, if all goes according to plan, Perseverance will enter the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph. Seven nerve-racking minutes later, Perseverance will be lowered gently onto the surface by a jetpack. The rover will land in Jezero Crater, a site that will provide a window to a time when rain fell and rivers flowed on ancient Mars.
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- Over the past 30 years, a fleet of rovers and orbiters have built a picture of an Earth-like ancient Mars. Between 3 and 4 billion years ago, Mars hosted vast river networks as long as the Mississippi, deep lakes that contained the building blocks of life, and hot springs that bubbled with potential for life.
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- These watery environments were able to exist because ancient Mars had a thick atmosphere. However, that atmosphere has been leaking away, leaving the surface today cold, dry and inhospitable.
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- Jezero Crater was selected as the site on Mars that is most likely to preserve signs of life that might have inhabited Mars billions of years ago, when microbial life was first starting on Earth.
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- Satellite images of Jezero show a river leading into the crater and ending in a large delta, which must have formed in a long-lived ancient lake. A bathtub ring of carbonate minerals around the edge of the crater might have formed along ancient beaches, and may preserve rocks with microbial textures known as stromatolites. Stromatolites record some of the earliest signs of life on Earth, and Perseverance will search for similar signs of life on Mars.
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- Perseverance will have many new capabilities that will transform how we explore Mars. The rover carries “Ingenuity“, a small helicopter that will be the first aircraft to fly on another planet. Because Mars’ atmosphere today is so thin, only 1% of the Earth’s, Ingenuity has to be extremely lightweight (4 lbs) with very large blades (4 feet tip-to-tip) to get off the ground.
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- Ingenuity will take images of the distant landscape and help us scout the rover’s traverse. Future Mars missions could adopt this model of rovers and aircraft working in tandem.
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- Looking even further ahead, Perseverance will help prepare for future human missions to Mars. One of many challenges for astronauts will be the packing list for a two-year roundtrip journey, which includes air, water and rocket fuel to get home.
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- If these resources could be harvested on Mars, human missions would be much more feasible. Perseverance will test a process for creating oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide atmosphere. In the future, similar instruments could be sent ahead of astronauts, so that breathable air and liquid oxygen rocket propellant are waiting when they arrive.
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- Mars 2020 rover uses its drill to core a rock sample on Mars. The rover will collect and store rock and soil samples on the planet’s surface that future missions will retrieve and return to Earth.
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- The most immediate goal of the mission is to search for evidence of past life, and Perseverance’s science payload will allow the rover to search for organic materials and microbial textures at the scale of a grain of salt.
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- Finding definitive evidence of microbial life is extremely difficult. Ultimately, we will need to look at samples from Jezero with advanced instruments on Earth. This is why Perseverance will also collect pencil-sized rock cores that will be returned to Earth by a series of missions in the late 2020s.
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- By laying the groundwork for sample return with Perseverance, NASA is taking the next giant leap in its exploration of Mars. The rocks collected by Perseverance may be our only shot in the foreseeable future to search for signs of life with samples from another planet.
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----------------------------------- More Reviews available:
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- 2783 - MARS - launch of Perseverance mission. - NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is on its way to the Red Planet to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples to send back to Earth. Humanity's most sophisticated rover launched July, 2020.
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- 2776 - MARS - 4th rock from the sun. Mars is the forth rock from the Sun and is the easiest planet for us to get to. Since 2007 we have 3 satellites orbiting Mars and 2 robots roving around the surface. The robots take pictures and run tests on the soil sending the data up to the satellite overhead to be relayed back to Earth.
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- Review 2772 - MARS - several steps to Perseverance. The Mars Perseverance rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The Mars Perseverance mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key questions about the potential for life on Mars.
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- Review 2760 - MARS - Perseverance Rover in 2020 launch? The mission is timed for a launch opportunity in July 2020 when Earth and Mars are in good positions relative to each other for landing on Mars. It takes less power to travel to Mars at this time, compared to other times when Earth and Mars are in different positions in their orbits.
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- 2608 - MARS - cosmic rays seen on Mars? NASA is using the ‘InSight lander” to look for meteors on Mars. From a glance at the images, the search seems straightforward. But, the images show mostly ghosts, the invisible made visible and the visible drowned out amid the illusions. Here is a summary of the data from sky watching on Mars.
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- 2276 - Mars is our forth terrestrial planet from the Sun. See Review 2275 for the current information on the latest missions and what we learned. This review is some of the earlier history and the math used to learn before our space ships could get there.
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- 2275 - After 15 years, the mission of NASA's Opportunity rover has come to an end, but its successes on Mars have earned it a spot in the robot hall of fame. The Mars Exploration Rovers mission featured two identical, golf-cart-sized, solar-powered rovers named Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit landed on Jan. 4, 2004. Opportunity landed on the opposite side of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004.
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- 1905 - Mars Explorations. Over 40 missions have been sent to Mars. 20 were successful in studying the Red Planet. This year the missions will get closer to the answer” “ Is there evidence of life on Mars? “
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- 1877 - What can we earn from Oxygen? Burn some in your brain and see if you can learn where oxygen came from. Can we find some of this life giving oxygen on Mars?
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- 1860 - Discoveries are coming fast in astronomy. Space missions to Mars and Ceres collect enough data to keep astronomers working for decades.
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- August 2, 2020 2785
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