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SPACE STORIES of the Yearp. 16 MARS 2020 ARRIVES AT THE RED PLANET p. 24 FEBRUARY 2021 The world’s best-selling astronomy magazine TOP 10 SPACE STORIES OF THE YEAR p. 16 A BRILLIANT COMET LIGHTS THE WAY THE MILKY WAY DOES THE WAVE BETELGEUSE FAKES AN EXPLOSION A NEW SUN TELESCOPE TAKES FLIGHT www.Astronomy.com $6.99 FIRST MIDSIZED BLACK HOLES DETECTED 02 Vol. 49 • GALAXIES SHED LIGHT ON DARK AGES Issue 2 CREW DRAGON GIVES ASTRONAUTS A RIDE 0 7447001096 8 NEW MARS ROVER begins its mission 24 ASTRONOMY • FEBRUARY 2021 Perseverance is more than just Curiosity’s double — it will hunt for ancient life, cache samples, and pave the way for human explorers. BY JIM BELL EVERY 10 YEARS, planetary scien- collectively known as Mars Sample tists put their collective minds together Return. Perseverance takes its first driving test on December 17, 2019, in a clean room at NASA’s Jet to develop mission recommendations Now, nine years later, that Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. for the decade ahead. The most recent of ambitious journey is about to begin. NASA/JPL-CALTECH these decadal surveys, published in 2011, The Mars 2020 mission launched from had a clear top priority for NASA: to Cape Canaveral on July 30, 2020, and is collect samples from the surface of Mars scheduled to land in Jezero Crater on and return them to Earth. February 18, 2021. If all goes well, the The concept of returning samples rover will embark on a mission lasting from Mars has been something of a holy at least a full martian year (equivalent grail for planetary scientists. As intrepid to 687 days on Earth). In addition to its as NASA’s previous robotic explorers own explorations, it will also collect and have been, their analyses of the rock and cache samples that will later be returned soil they rove have always been limited to Earth — revealing the mysteries of by the equipment they carry. When you that once-habitable place on Mars. ship a rover to Mars, the cost of every extra ounce is colossal. And rover A clone is born instruments — marvels of engineering In December 2012, just four months though they are — are no substitute for after the Curiosity rover landed a fully equipped laboratory on Earth. on Mars, NASA announced a new That’s why, in the 2011 Decadal wheeled explorer that would address Survey, scientists recommended NASA the top goal of the most recent decadal. Perseverance lifts off on July 30, 2020, atop a design a flagship mission to “collect, It was scheduled to launch during a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at the document, and package samples for favorable Earth–Mars alignment in Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral. future collection and return to Earth.” 2020. This Mars 2020 rover would UNITED LAUNCH ALLIANCE In other words, the community be designed and built by a team at strongly recommended that NASA NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory finally greenlight a set of missions (JPL) in Pasadena, California — a team that included many of the engineers, managers, and others who had built The Perseverance rover is NASA’s follow-up to the Curiosity, as well as previous Mars rov- successful Curiosity rover and will rove Jezero Crater in search of chemical or textural evidence ers Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity. of past microbial life. NASA/JPL-CALTECH To fit NASA’s tight budget and reduce the mission’s complexity, 90 percent of the Mars 2020 rover, cruise stage, and sky crane landing system would be built from spare parts left over from Curiosity. Mars 2020 With social distancing in effect, senior engineers in Southern California conducted their final inspections remotely via a video feed from a smartphone at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA/JPL-CALTECH MARS SAMPLE RETURN WHILE NO MISSIONS have yet been approved or funded, several space agencies around the world are deep in the planning stages for a Mars sample-return mission. For example, A ROVER’S NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are discussing a concept for joint missions that would find, collect, and return the samples cached by the Perseverance rover. And the JOURNEY Chinese National Space Agency is looking into potential robotic sample-return missions as follow-ons to their Tianwen-1 mission, which launched July 23, 2020, and will land a rover in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars in February 2021. The NASA/ESA plan as currently envisioned would involve the launch of two missions in 2026. The first is a dedicated NASA lander carrying an ESA-built “fetch” rover and a small rocket known as the Mars Ascent Vehicle NASA sample ESA Earth (MAV). The fetch rover retrieval lander Return Orbiter 6 would collect the cached rocket rocket ERO travels to sample tubes left by near-Earth orbit Perseverance on Mars’ and releases the surface and bring them samples to Earth. back to the MAV, placing 5 them inside a soccer ball-sized sample cap- ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) picks sule. The MAV would up the samples. then launch them into Mars orbit, where an 4 ESA Earth-return orbiter — the second launch of The Mars Ascent Vehicle 2026 — would be waiting (MAV) to capture the sample launches the capsule. That orbiter sample tubes into Mars orbit. would then depart Mars and return to Earth, jetti- soning the capsule for a 3 parachute-assisted land- The fetch rover ing in the Utah desert in places the 2031. — J.B. tubes inside an ascent vehicle. 1 2 Perseverance collects the ESA’s “fetch” rover Midway samples and deposits them carries the tubes to the in tubes on the ground. sample retrieval lander. ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY. SPACECRAFT MODELS: NASA, ESA would thus be a clone, of sorts — looking and weather of its field site. However, a lot like Curiosity on the outside, but Perseverance also has a number of new and costing at least $700 million less than unique objectives. Perhaps the most impor- Curiosity’s $2.8 billion price tag. tant is to seek the signs of ancient life. On the inside, however, the Mars 2020 Ancient means not focusing on any This map shows a hypothetical course that Perseverance might take, based on scenarios plotted rover would sport some entirely new potential living organisms on the surface by mission scientists. The actual route will of course equipment to help it carry out the sample- of Mars today (which are highly unlikely differ, depending on where Perseverance happens caching job the decadal had outlined. to exist, given the harsh radiation, low to touch down within the landing ellipse. The prime mission is to explore Jezero Crater; if the rover survives The mission’s announcement kicked off surface pressure, and frigid temperature). to tackle an extended mission, it may trek up and out what NASA Associate Administrator for Instead, Perseverance will seek evidence of the crater west to another site, dubbed Midway. ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY. BASE MAP IMAGE: ESA/FU-BERLIN; ROVER PATH (PRIME Science John Grunsfeld called “seven of organisms that may have lived billions MISSION): SANJEEV GUPTA AND BRIONY HORGAN; ROVER PATH (EXTENDED MISSION): years of innovation” to develop that of years ago, during a time early in Mars’ RICHARD OTERO, ERISA STILLEY, NATHAN WILLIAMS, ALLEN CHEN, ET AL. equipment, along with some completely history when the surface environment was new tools. In early 2020, nearing the end a lot more like Earth’s. of the seven-year sprint, the rover finally These signs could come in the form of received its name: Perseverance. preserved physical or chemical evidence, ago, back in the Precambrian era, organ- or textures left imprinted on rocks. isms didn’t develop shells or skeletons that In search of ancient life Finding these biomarkers, however, is could easily leave behind fossil remains Many of the Mars 2020 mission’s goals no small task. Geologists have a similar until about 550 million years ago. are similar to those of previous Mars struggle on Earth: Though life began on Among the prime examples of ancient rover missions, like studying the geology our planet some 3 billion to 4 billion years biomarkers on Earth are stromatolites, 26 ASTRONOMY • FEBRUARY 2021 D elta Delta remnants Delta surface Delta Crater base rim Western Eastern landing site landing site Lake margin Jezero Crater landing ellipse Crater floor N W Prime mission Extended mission 2 miles 3 kilometers which are rock and mineral structures geological or geochemical processes. built up by coordinated groups of simple Rather, samples must often be taken back single-celled organisms, especially cya- into sophisticated laboratories with the nobacteria (formerly called blue-green most advanced equipment that exists. algae). Finding structures like those in This is one of the main motivations ancient rocks on Mars would be an excit- for making Mars 2020 the first step of an ing and potentially profound discovery. international Mars sample-return pro- But definitively confirming these gram. Barring the unambiguous (and structures will be difficult with unlikely) discovery of biomarkers like Perseverance’s toolkit alone. Taking a fossils, the only way to confirm signs of cue from terrestrial geologists, planetary life might be to bring those samples back This reconstructed mosaic view of Jezero Crater’s magnificent river delta from above looks west, out to scientists have realized that equipment to Earth so they can be studied in much the crater rim. The steep slopes of the delta in the used in the field often cannot tease out greater detail. As Carl Sagan famously foreground stand up to 350 feet (107 m) above the whether the samples truly provide evi- noted, “extraordinary claims require crater floor.
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