Experts estimate the chances of success of the NASA spacecraft mission
The Mars rover Perseverance, which successfully landed on the surface of the Earth's neighbor yesterday, should make the first controlled drone flight on another planet, find traces of life there, water on the surface and under it, and take panoramic pictures. According to Russian experts, the potential of this machine for searching for extraterrestrial life is much higher than that of its predecessor Curiosity. The launch of the Russian ExoMars spacecraft, which is being created jointly with European partners, has been postponed to 2022, which further pushes Russia away from the possibility of developing the red planet in parallel.
Mars — that's life
Having covered 472 million km in 203 days, the Mars rover Perseverance (from the English. perseverance) successfully landed on the surface of the red planet. The vehicle, which weighs a ton and is the size of a car, will be tested for several weeks and then begin exploring the Jezero crater.
"The mission itself embodies the human ideal of striving for the future and will help us prepare for human exploration of the red planet," said NASA Acting Administrator Steve Yurchik.
The first difficulty that was overcome was the landing of Perseverance on the surface of Mars, said Maxim Litvak, Head of the Laboratory of Neutron and gamma-ray Spectroscopy of the Nuclear Planetology Department of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an interview with Izvestia.
- Landing is a very technically complex process, and no one, except NASA, has such a methodology. So far, this is the only organization that has successfully landed its vehicles on Mars. We can only congratulate NAS on the success repeated for the second time.
NASA specialists after a successful landing. Perseverance to the surface of Mars
Image Source: Photo: Global Look Press/Bill Ingalls/Nasa
The rover will explore the rocks and sediments of ancient Lake Jezero and the river delta to study the geology and climate in the past. But the main part of the mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life. Success in this business is not only a matter of technique, but also luck.
The same tasks were performed by the predecessor of Perseverance-the Curiosity rover. He proved that at the place of its landing (at the foot of the mountain inside the Gale crater), the conditions for the formation and origin of life were: the necessary elements, water, and normal temperature were present. Whether the organic matter found is of biological origin is still unknown.
"Perseverance landed in the Jezero crater and I think there should be more biological traces that could reach our days," said Maxim Litvak. - Scientists intend to preserve some of the collected samples. The next mission, which will be able to take these samples to Earth, will allow them to be studied in much more detail, using instruments that could not be installed on the rover.
However, everything that was possible, Perseverance was equipped with. The cameras on it will create color 3D panoramas of the Martian landscape with high resolution. The pulsed laser will allow you to study the chemistry of rocks and sediments. A series of spectrometers will display the presence of certain minerals and organic molecules that are the building blocks of life on Earth. The radar will allow you to search for water not near the surface, as it was on Curiosity, but also at a depth of about a meter.
New step
On board Perseverance is a drone Ingenuity, (from the English. "ingenuity"), which, if successful, will be the first controlled aircraft on another planet. Its systems will be tested for the next month or two, and only then will flight tests begin.
Ingenuity Drone
Image Source: Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
— The experiment is extremely interesting, and I really want it to be a success, - said Alexander Rodin, head of the laboratory of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles of the Center for Environmental Monitoring and Ecology of the MIPT. — However, if it doesn't work out, you shouldn't be surprised: drones have never flown in such a rarefied atmosphere. I would like to emphasize the difference between the current mission and the previous ones. This is a step from purely scientific research to a Mars exploration program. NASA makes it clear that it will develop the planet, and robots, and not a person.
For Russia, the immediate prospect of a "contact" study of Mars is the implementation of the ExoMars mission. This is a joint program of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian state corporation Roscosmos. The second stage of the project provided for the delivery to Mars of a Russian landing platform with a European rover on board on March 12, 2020. But the launch was postponed to 2022, because additional tests of the spacecraft are needed.
— The mission is also very difficult, - said Maxim Litvak. — Although the rover is smaller than the NASA vehicles, it will be equipped with a drilling rig that will allow you to take samples from a significant depth. In terms of effort and money invested, this is the number one priority for Mars. It is worth considering that in addition to the Americans, no one has ever landed on Mars. However, in the spring, the Chinese plan to land their module, and it will be interesting to see what they will do.
Rudolf Bakitko, one of the creators of the Soviet automatic interplanetary vehicles for flights to the Moon, Venus and Mars, was skeptical about Russia's potential for Mars exploration.
The first images from the surface of Mars transmitted by the Perseverance rover
Image Source: Photo: Global Look Press/NASA/JPL-Caltech
— Once we were the first in deep space, and now we are just creating landing platforms. And today this is our maximum, " the expert said. — It is unlikely that in the near future we will be able to repeat the achievement of NASA on our own. Creating a device like Perseverance requires a high-tech element base, which we do not have. And the organization of the process, for example, is lame. Our last successful achievements are Radioastron and Spektr-RG, but these projects were started 30 years ago.
The Kremlin welcomed the landing of an American research vehicle on Mars, noting that such things are the property of humanity.
Olga Kolentsova
