BY Roman INGUANZO

On Saturday, February 18, the Perseverance rover celebrated its second anniversary on the surface of Mars. Since its arrival on the Red Planet, the rover has successfully carried out an array of scientific research using her suite of seven instruments. Most recently, the rover deposited a collection of samples that will eventually be brought back to Earth via the Mars Sample Return Campaign for further study. Now, the rover is on its way to explore the Delta Top – an unexplored location where scientists believe ancient rivers used to flow. By investigating the Delta Top, NASA hopes to uncover signs of ancient microbial life that may have lived in the ancient river.

The CVW recently conducted a Zoom interview with with Perseverance Project Manager Art Thompson at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to discuss the project in greater detail.

Given his 30 years of experience, Thompson is well aware of the risks and challenges that Perseverance will face as she traverses her way to the Delta Top.

“We’re driving up and out of a crater…that will be a challenge,” Thompson said. “We’re going to see some steeper terrain than we had encountered down in the floor of the crater and we’ll see some ripples and sand dunes that we’ll have to either navigate over or around.”

The Perserveance the continuation Mars exploration by rovers.

“We’ll be going to an area that’s not quite as well identified from aerial imaging, so we’ll have to do a lot of that imaging in real time as we’re driving up,” he said.

Space offers limitless possibilities. However, with limitless possibilities often come with limitless challenges.

According to Thompson, the dangers that Perseverance will encounter are not limiting. Rather, they are an opportunity to learn and improve.

“Every time we go to a new place, it’s a new environment for us to have some science rich targets,” he said.

Throughout human existence, we have looked to the stars – wondering if life exists beyond our planet. This curiosity built the foundation for one of Perseverance’s primary objectives: to determine whether or not life existed on Mars.

So what would happen if scientists were able to confirm ancient live on Mars?

“I imagine that it would be a big boost to space exploration if we could bring home samples that actually showed that there was biotic life on Mars. I think the drive to actually get there and try to find more developed life would basically be improved,” Thompson said.

Thompson is confident that humanity’s inherent desire to discover will drive the space program ever-forward in its search for extraterrestrial life. Agencies such as JPL and NASA are ultimately dependent on the public to operate. Without public support and interest, these agencies would be unable to fully pursue humanity’s fundamental questions.

“Going all the way back to Pathfinder and Sojourner, we always joked about finding a dinosaur bone just on the other side of the next rock – this desire to explore and discover is really one of the biggest arguments for having a mobile vehicle on the surface,” he said. “Let’s say you have a static lander on the surface, and a big boulder can be seen five meters away… this leads one to ask ‘what’s on the back side of that Boulder?’ However, you don’t know the answer unless you drive around it.”

In order to manage the ambitious projects that NASA and JPL takes on, it is essential to continuously improve. In order to design the next generation of space technologies, they must apply the lessons they learn from the Perseverance rover to new projects.Thompson,  having worked on all five rovers sent to Mars, provided his insight on the advancements made following each consecutive generation of mars-bound rovers.

“Every rover stands on the shoulders of the preceding rovers. So, the things we’ve learned from operations on Sojourner (the first rover to land and travel on Mars) where, if we got a few meters on in a day… that was a wonderful drive for us. Now, we’re talking a few hundred meters in a day and… we do what’s called an Auto-Nav (automatic navigation). So…we basically give it (the rover) a point in the horizon that we want to drive to and the vehicle figures out how to get there on its own. That Auto-Nav is a very sophisticated algorithm that we continuously improve on and revise. So, future rovers will be much much smarter because of the technology we’re developing and employing right now on Perseverance. It’s the same type of thing that we did with Curiosity 10 years ago, where we started these Auto-Nav routines… and we’ve then vastly improved them for Perseverance,” he said.

Honed by its predecessors, the technologies that comprise Perseverance will be tested to their limits as the rover enters its second year on Mars. Thompson made it clear that, even though Perseverance has successfully gathered numerous samples from Mars, its mission is far from over.

“This stage in Perseverance’s mission is called an extended prime mission because we’re not done with the sample return yet,” he said.

Perseverance must deliver its samples to the sample return lander in order to carry out the extended prime mission. However, the sample return lander will not arrive on Mars’ surface anytime soon. In fact, it will take eight years until the sample return lander arrives. As such, the Perseverance rover must survive eight more years in order to fully realize its purpose. 

Thompson sees this time gap as a perfect opportunity for additional scientific endeavors.

“During that time, Perseverance will continue to explore Mars; identifying new targets and collecting about 30 more samples along the way,” he said.

According to Thompson, the year prior to the sample retrieval’s arrival will probably be “…spent heading toward the landing site and getting into position”. That way, Perseverance can successfully deliver the payload to the retrieval craft.

Once the hand-off is complete, Perseverance’s mission will be complete. According to Thompson, Perseverance will remain on Mars and continue doing scientific exploration until its power supply dies. Even though Perseverance will eventually end, its purpose – to explore and study the unknown – will remain as a continuous driver of space exploration for years to come.

  Roman INGUANZO