Chloe Reid
Reporter
On Feb. 18, 2021, the Perseverance Rover landed on Mars. This landing marked the start of a long-awaited moment, a moment that could potentially help the future of science, as well as help the progression of discovering life forms on a foreign planet. The rover was launched on July 30, 2020 and circulated through space for nearly 7 months before making its final descent. The mission, known formally as “Mars 2020”, encompasses the effort of landing Perseverance, and the new addition of a small robot helicopter named Ingenuity. Throughout its course, Mars 2020 has several goals. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) website, the main goals of the Mars 2020 mission were to determine whether life ever existed on Mars to characterize the climate of Mars, to characterize the geology of Mars and to prepare for human exploration. The Mars 2020 mission has become the first of its kind to actively search for previous life on the planet, compared to other missions whose purpose was to simply check if the planet was habitable.
Idaho’s very own Idaho National Laboratory (INL) had a part to play in this monumental landing. A large group of employees at the laboratory assembled, tested and delivered the system, also known as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) that powers the rover. This system will be able to provide heat and power to the Perseverance Rover and increase its lifespan for longer endeavors. According to the INL website, this system will allow the rover to dependably roam the Red Planet over the course of many years, gathering key information for scientists back on Earth. “It’s so rewarding to know you’re one of a handful of people who had their hands on something that goes to space. That’s pretty cool,” said Jon Bradley, a Shelley, ID native and one of the supervisors on the project.
In the entire past existence of the solar system, the discovery of potential life forms on a new planet has only recently been discovered as doable. Mars, being the most similar planet to Earth in terms of habitability, and being the main planet for astrobiological studies, has long had a need for further exploration. The Mars 2020 mission is one of the first steps in reaching that need. Out of the nearly 50 spacecraft that have traveled to Mars since the 1960s, only five, one of those five being Perseverance, have successfully traveled across the surface of the planet. NASA also incorporated something new for this trip. Sending the helicopter “Ingenuity” into the air, which will attempt to scout the Red Planet, trying to find locations of interest for future trips. Although Mars is now considered a cold, hostile environment, billions of years ago it is thought to have been warmer and wetter, more suitable for living organisms. For years, Mars has been questioned by humans in terms of its capability of hosting living organisms and the potential ability to host humans in the future. The Perseverance Rover isn’t just exploring the Red Planet. If all goes according to plan, the rover should be able to take a bit of Mars back to Earth for further investigation. By undertaking such a mission, it is hoped that Perseverance will be able to search rock samples on the Red Planet and look for biosignatures that could lead to a nod towards past microbial life. If such life has been found to exist, it could put humans on the right track to deeming Mars as habitable to all forms of life in the future years of discovery. Humans have been searching Mars for years, and in the planet’s on-again, off-again search, scientists have successfully taken the next massive step towards finding if another planet could potentially be habitable. In the past year, we have been dealing with seemingly everything unexpected, having such a monumental start to change is truly a step in a better direction. President Joe Biden congratulated NASA on its feat and stated that such a task was a “giant leap” for America. “It’s so much bigger than landing Perseverance on Mars, it’s about the American spirit. And you brought it back. You brought it back in a moment we so desperately needed.” Biden told Mike Watkins, the current Jet Propulsion Laboratory director. Known as JPL for short, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a national research facility that carries out robotic space and earth science missions (NASA).
Within the next few years of discoveries and data collection of Perseverance and Ingenuity, if all goes to plan the rover should be able to bring back pieces of the Red Planet. With these pieces, researchers hope to find pieces of biology within using equipment that can’t fit into any sort of rover. Hopefully, with these discoveries, a new side of the Earth’s sister planet can be uncovered, leading science towards the future of the potential habitability of a new terrain.
