NASA’s Mars 2020 rover practices its crucial descent separation

By Georgina Torbet Published April 28, 2022

In this picture from September 28, 2019, engineers and technicians working on the Mars 2020 spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, look on as a crane lifts the rocket-powered descent stage away from the rover after a test. NASA/JPL-Caltech

When the Mars 2020 spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere in two years’ time and prepares to land, the rover will need to detach from the rocket-powered descent stage so it is free to explore the Jezero Crater. This delicate operation was recently practiced here on Earth, with engineers at NASA performing a successful separation test using a large crane to ensure the rover and descent stage can separate cleanly.

“Firing the pyrotechnic devices that held the rover and descent stage together and then doing the post-test inspection of the two vehicles was an all-day affair,” Ryan van Schilifgaarde, a support engineer for Mars 2020 assembly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “With this test behind us, the rover and descent stage go their separate ways for a while. Next time they are attached will be at the Cape next spring during final assembly.”

Recommended Videos

Now in its final year of engineering before launching in July 2020, the rover will be put through a range of tests to ensure it is ready for whatever its long space journey and the red planet can throw at it. In addition to the separation test, it has already completed tests of its high definition cameras which will capture images of the surface of Mars and a series of tests of its launch, navigation, and landing systems.

The next benchmarks for the rover will be evaluations of how its computers and mechanical systems fair in the cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressures it will experience on Mars. The Surface Thermal Test will recreate the conditions on Mars to see if they cause any electrical or other issues.

Once all the testing is completed and the engineers have declared the rover ready for its expedition, it will be launched on 17 July 2020 from Cape Canaveral, carried aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. It will take seven months for the craft to reach Mars, with a landing scheduled for February 18, 2021.

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

Perseverance rover finds tantalizing hints of possible ancient life on Mars

mars 2020 perseverance rover

NASA's Perseverance rover was sent to Mars with one big, ambitious aim: to see if life could ever have thrived on our neighboring planet. Although there's unlikely to be anything alive on Mars now, the planet was once similar to Earth, with a thicker atmosphere and plentiful water on its surface. And during this time, billions of years ago, microbial life could have survived there. Now, Perseverance has located some tantalizing indications of possible microbial life -- although it's too early for scientists to be sure.

The rover has been taking samples by drilling into the martian rock as it travels, and it's a recent sample from an area called the Cheyava Falls that has ignited interest. The rock, collected on July 21, has indications of chemical signatures and physical structures that could potentially have been formed by life, such as the presence of organic compounds. These carbon-based molecules are the building blocks of life; however, they can also be formed by other processes.

Space

How NASA is using AI on the Perseverance rover to study Mars rocks

akdjf alkjdhf lk

Space engineers have been using AI in rovers for some time now -- hence why today's Mars explorers are able to pick a safe landing site and to drive around a region autonomously. But something they haven't been able to do before now is to do science themselves, as most of that work is done by scientists on Earth who analyze data and point the rover toward targets they want to investigate.

Now, though, NASA's Perseverance rover is taking the first steps toward autonomous science investigation on Mars. The rover has been testing out an AI capability for the last three years, which allows it to search for and identify particular minerals in Mars rocks. The system works using the rover's PIXL instrument (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), a spectrometer that uses light to analyze what rocks are made of. The software, called adaptive sampling, looks though PIXL's data and identifies minerals to be studied in more detail.

Space

NASA axes its moon rover project VIPER

NASA’s VIPER – short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – sits assembled inside the cleanroom at the agency’s Johnson Space Center.

NASA’s VIPER -- short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover -- sits assembled inside the cleanroom at the agency’s Johnson Space Center. NASA

NASA has announced it is scrapping its plans to send a rover to the moon. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, project was intended to search the moon's polar regions for water, but will now be shelved due to budget issues. Originally slated to land on the moon in December 2022, the project had been delayed several times, and the most recent update was that it would not be ready until September 2025.