"The Jezero Crater landing site includes geologically rich terrain, including 3.6 billion-year-old formations that may answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology," said Thomas Zorbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Administration. "Receiving samples from this unique region will revolutionize the way we think about Mars and its ability to support life."
NASA has chosen Jezero Crater as the landing site for the Mars 2020 spacecraft and rover. This is after five years of searching, in which every available detail of more than 60 candidate locations on the Red Planet was examined and discussed by the mission team and the planetary science community.
The Mars 2020 rover will be NASA's next step in exploring the red planet, not only will it look for signs of ancient conditions for past bacterial life, but it will also collect rock samples and store them in one place. NASA and the European Space Agency are planning spacecraft in the future that will retrieve the samples and return them to Earth, and thus the location of the current landing determines the place where Mars will be explored in the next decade.
"The Jezero Crater landing site includes geologically rich terrain, including 3.6 billion-year-old formations that may answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology," said Thomas Zorbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Administration. "Receiving samples from this unique region will revolutionize the way we think about Mars and its ability to support life."
Jazero Crater is located at the western end of Isidis Planitia, the floor of a giant impact crater north of the Martian equator. The western region of the Idysis Plain presents some of the most scientifically ancient landscapes Mars has to offer.
The scientists of the expedition believe that the approximately 45 kilometer long crater, which was the delta of an ancient river, may preserve ancient organic molecules and other possible signs of microbial life from the water and alluvium that flowed into the crater billions of years ago.
The ancient delta of Jezero Crater contains numerous sample targets of at least five types of rocks, including clay and carbonaceous compounds that have a high potential to preserve signatures of past life. Also, the material that flowed into the delta from a large river may contain a wide variety of minerals that were transported from inside the crater and even outside of it.
The geological diversity that makes Jezero so attractive to Mars 2020 mission scientists also poses a challenge for mission engineers. Along with the nearby large river delta and small impact craters, the site contains many cliffs and rocks extending to the east, chasms towards the west and valleys filled with silt in several places.
"The Mars community has long calculated the scientific value of sites such as the Jezero Crater and a previous spacecraft was supposed to reach it, but the challenges of landing did not seem easy." Said Ken Perley, Mars 2020 Project Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "But what was once beyond our reach is now possible thanks to the Mars 2020 engineering team and developments in the field of entry into the Martian atmosphere, the descent to the lander and the technologies necessary for the landing itself."
When the search on the site began, the mission engineers had already improved the landing system, and thus managed to reduce the landing area of Mars 2020 to an area 50% smaller than the one where the Mars rover Curiosity landed in 2012. NASA has developed a new capability that assists in the landing, known as Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN), operated by rocket engines that will lead the vehicle to the surface to avoid dangerous areas.
The selection of the site depends on extensive analyzes and verification tests of the capacity of the TRN. A final report will be presented to an independent review committee and NASA management in the fall of 2019.
"There is nothing more difficult in planetary exploration using robotic spacecraft than landing on Mars," said Zorbuchen. "The Mars 2020 engineering team worked hard to prepare them for this decision. The team will continue their work to understand the TRN system and the risks involved in its operation, and we will review the findings independently to ensure the increase of our chances of success."
Jezero Crater will be photographed in detail by the spacecraft orbiting Mars, combing the area in detail and looking for areas with the most interesting geological features so that Mars 2020 can collect the best soil samples.
For information on the NASA website
More of the topic in Hayadan:
3 תגובות
One open question is whether the mass of Mars and its magnetic field, if any, create enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere. If we can't just live in sealed buildings all the time, and it's limited no matter how we look at it. The Mars series in National Geographic sheds light on the efforts.
I wonder what kind of salary those people who are thinking of colonizing Mars get. Its average density is 3.95 grams per cubic meter. Mars has only a quarter of the surface of the Earth and its mass is only one tenth of the mass of the Earth. The gravity on Mars is about 38% of the gravity on Earth. The atmosphere of Mars is tenuous: the air pressure on the surface is only 10 millibars, only about 1% of the average pressure on the surface of the Earth. Temperature: ‑ minimum 140.15- Celsius ‑ average 63.15- Celsius ‑ maximum 5.15- Celsius. They are talking about a 6 degree rise in the Earth's temperature that will cause a global holocaust. How much energy is needed to heat the "pioneers" who will colonize Mars. How much oxygen and nitrogen are needed to create an atmosphere similar to ours. For me, those identified scientists would be fired immediately. Nonsense should be told elsewhere. All space exploration must be done by robots. They are almost as smart as humans. If they don't know something, let them ask the unidentified scientists. It seems to me that Mr. Mesk is a little crazy or doesn't know how to read scientific literature.
Drive carefully.
Yours.-Life
I have a feeling that the same billionaires who are making the Earth uninhabitable dream of colonizing Mars so they can escape there when the time comes. But that might just be a conspiracy theory of mine