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Raumfahrt - NASA Mars Perseverance Rover 2020 Mission-Update-23

12.03.2021

NASA preparing to fly Ingenuity Mars drone, enabling future airborne missions

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As NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, continues its own checkouts and tests, work is starting for a new phase of the mission – the Ingenuity helicopter. This first-of-its-kind piece of hardware will demonstrate (non-rocket) powered flight on a world other than Earth for the first time. Data from these flights – expected to begin in 30-60 days – will help to develop future programs for missions to Mars and beyond.

 

Ingenuity is an experimental addition to the Mars 2020 mission. No matter the results of its test campaign, it will not have a significant effect on the primary mission.

Teams are planning for a 30 day flight window for the helicopter. They currently aim for a minimum of one flight, but that has the possibility of being extended. The first flight will feature a relatively simple 20-30 second low altitude hover test before landing. Afterwards, flights will last longer and travel farther.

Ingenuity features a pair of coaxial, 1.2 meter long, carbon fiber rotors. “Coaxial” means that the rotors are stacked on top of each other and spin in opposite directions, dramatically increasing the lift with a minimal increase in area.

The rotors will spin at a rate of 2,400 rotations per minute (RPM) – far higher than the approximately 500 RPM of many Earth-based helicopters. The rotors need to spin fast to account for the extremely thin Martian atmosphere.

Ingenuity after assembly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The carbon fiber patterns on the rotors and legs are visible. Credit: NASA.

The helicopter is powered by a single solar array above the rotors which charges six lithium-ion batteries. These batteries will enable Ingenuity to fly for up to 90 seconds at a time. A single 90 second flight – the maximum flight time of Ingenuity – will consume approximately 8.75 watt-hours – less energy than in an iPhone 12 battery.

Four carbon fiber legs sticking out of the corners of the main body will absorb any extra velocity and shocks upon landing.

The combination of its small size and large amount of composite materials makes Ingenuity especially light, massing 1.8 kilograms. On Earth, this equates to 17.7 Newtons (4.0 pounds), but in Mars‘ lower gravity, Ingenuity weighs only 6.7 Newtons (1.5 pounds).

Once it is deployed from Perseverance, Ingenuity will communicate with Earth through the rover. Each has a small antenna to talk to each other, and the rover will relay data back to Earth using its more powerful communications suite.

Throughout the cruise to Mars, Ingenuity communicated and received power directly through Perseverance.

On August 13, 2020, NASA announced that the helicopter was powered on and recharged in space for the first time. This was approximately two weeks after launch. The batteries were only charged to 35%, since each full charge and discharge of lithium-ion batteries slightly reduces their longevity. Keeping them at a low-to-medium charge level minimizes this impact.

Engineers then repeated this test approximately every two weeks during the cruise to Mars.

Perseverance – with Ingenuity attached on its belly – touched down on Mars on February 18, 2021.

The helicopter is currently still connected to Perseverance, as the latter completes its checkouts and initial operations on the Martian surface.

On March 2, the rover successfully deployed and tested its robotic arm. The arm contains several instruments and cameras, most notably the rover’s drill. It also features the PIXL and SHERLOC instruments – containing an x-ray and ultraviolet spectrometer, respectively. These will enable more detailed analysis of surface materials.

A view of the Martian surface – featuring fresh tire tracks – as seen by Perseverance after its maiden drive on March 4. Credit: NASA.

Two days later, on March 4, Perseverance completed its first drive across Mars. The 6.5 meter (21.3 feet) trek gave rover operators and mission planners at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) their first opportunity to test out and calibrate the rover’s motors. The short drive consisted of a four meter move forward, a 150 degree left turn, and a final 2.5 meter drive in reverse. The team reported that the rover’s performance was excellent.

They are now beginning the search for a flat and clear area of land – appropriately nicknamed the “helipad” – at which Ingenuity will be deployed. Once Perseverance finds and moves to such a location, the team will command the rover to deploy Ingenuity. This will take place approximately 30 days after landing.

The deployment process consists of several steps to deliver the helicopter to the Martian surface.

First, the cover protecting Ingenuity will be jettisoned, and Perseverance will drive away. Then, the first connections to the helicopter will be cut, and two of its landing legs will be deployed – rotating it away from the belly of the rover. It will then be rotated to a fully upright position under the rover, where its final two legs will be deployed.

Perseverance will then drop Ingenuity onto the surface, and drive away to a safe distance.

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Ingenuity‘s solo test campaign will begin with a series of internal checkouts, notably testing whether it can maintain a stable temperature and recharge its batteries using its small solar panel.

Should all these steps be completed successfully, the rotors will then be spun up to a high speed, although not fast enough to lift the vehicle off the surface. This will ensure the motors are working nominally and clear the vehicle for flight.

As previously discussed, the initial flight will last 20-30 seconds, and consist of Ingenuity hovering at a small altitude above the surface. Should that flight be a success, later ones will see the helicopter perform more complex operations.

The current test window will last only 30 days, but that is likely to be extended if Ingenuity is performing well.

Ingenuity marks the beginning of otherworldly flight. No matter the outcome, it will provide a trove of data to help the designers of future off-Earth helicopters.

 

 

The first such mission will be Dragonfly, a large, eight-rotor drone which will explore a portion of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Dragonfly will be similar in size to Perseverance, and actually use an identical Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) for power.

The MMRTG will charge Dragonfly’s batteries during the Titan night, enabling 30-minute long flights and data downlink during the day.

Dragonfly will feature a host of experiments to study Titan’s atmosphere, surface composition, and seismology. It will be the second mission to Titan, after Huygens in 2005.

Dragonfly is set to launch in 2027, and land on Titan in 2036.

Quelle: NS

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Update: 16.03.2021

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Perseverance SuperCam science instrument delivers first results

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Combining two images, this mosaic shows a close-up view of the rock target named "Yeehgo" from the SuperCam instrument on NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. The component images were taken by SuperCam's Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) on March 7, 2021 (the 16th Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance's mission on Mars). To be compatible with the rover's software, "Yeehgo" is an alternative spelling of "Yeigo," the Navajo word for diligent. The target is 10.9 feet (3.325 meters) from the rover. Each of the two images in the mosaic shows a field of view 2.5 inches (6.2 centimeters) in diameter. Perseverance's Navigation Cameras (Nav Cam) and Mastcam-Z instrument also took images of that area at the same time to provide multiple views of the rock target, as seen in the annotated version of this image.

The first readings from the SuperCam instrument aboard NASA's Perseverance rover have arrived on Earth. SuperCam was developed jointly by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research laboratories under the auspices of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The instrument delivered data to the French Space Agency's operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet.

"It is amazing to see SuperCam working so well on Mars," said Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for Perseverance's SuperCam instrument from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "When we first dreamed up this instrument eight years ago, we worried that we were being way too ambitious. Now it is up there working like a charm."

Perched atop the rover's mast, SuperCam's 12-pound (5.6-kilogram) sensor head can perform five types of analyses to study Mars' geology and help scientists choose which rocks the rover should sample in its search for signs of ancient microbial life. Since the rover's Feb. 18 touchdown, the mission has been performing health checks on all of its systems and subsystems. Early data from SuperCam tests - including sounds from the Red Planet - have been intriguing.

"The sounds acquired are remarkable quality," says Naomi Murdoch, a research scientist and lecturer at the ISAE-SUPAERO aerospace engineering school in Toulouse. "It's incredible to think that we're going to do science with the first sounds ever recorded on the surface of Mars!"

On March 9, the mission released three SuperCam audio files. Obtained only about 18 hours after landing, when the mast remained stowed on the rover deck, the first file captures the faint sounds of Martian wind.

The wind is more audible, especially around the 20-second mark, in the second sound file, recorded on the rover's fourth Martian day, or sol.

SuperCam's third file, from Sol 12, includes the zapping sounds of the laser impacting a rock target 30 times at a distance of about 10 feet (3.1 meters). Some zaps sound slightly louder than others, providing information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness.

"I want to extend my sincere thanks and congratulations to our international partners at CNES and the SuperCam team for being a part of this momentous journey with us," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"SuperCam truly gives our rover eyes to see promising rock samples and ears to hear what it sounds like when the lasers strike them. This information will be essential when determining which samples to cache and ultimately return to Earth through our groundbreaking Mars Sample Return Campaign, which will be one of the most ambitious feats ever undertaken by humanity."

The SuperCam team also received excellent first datasets from the instrument's visible and infrared (VISIR) sensor as well as its Raman spectrometer. VISIR collects light reflected from the Sun to study the mineral content of rocks and sediments. This technique complements the Raman spectrometer, which uses a green laser beam to excite the chemical bonds in a sample to produce a signal depending on what elements are bonded together, in turn providing insights into a rock's mineral composition.

"This is the first time an instrument has used Raman spectroscopy anywhere other than on Earth!" said Olivier Beyssac, CNRS research director at the Institut de Mineralogie, de Physique des Materiaux et de Cosmochimie in Paris.

"Raman spectroscopy is going to play a crucial role in characterizing minerals to gain deeper insight into the geological conditions under which they formed and to detect potential organic and mineral molecules that might have been formed by living organisms."

Quelle: SD

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Update: 17.03.2021

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A month on Mars: what NASA's Perseverance rover has found so far

No signs of past life yet, but rocks at its landing site show signs of being shaped by wind and water.
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Perseverance took its first drive on Martian soil on 4 March.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance rover has had a busy first month on Mars’s surface. From Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed on 18 February, it has been doing as much geology as it can — snapping pictures of its surroundings and analyzing the rocks nearby. Already, team scientists have determined that several of the rocks are chemically similar to volcanic rocks on Earth, and that wind and water have eroded some of them.

“Everything is going great so far,” said Kenneth Farley, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the mission’s project scientist. He and others described Perseverance’s progress on 16 March at a virtual meeting of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

As planned, the rover’s main science experiments will have to wait a few more months, while engineers continue to test its scientific instruments and prepare for the first helicopter flight on another world. Eventually, Perseverance will deploy an arsenal of tools, including a drill bit, a close-up camera and multiple chemical sensors to hunt for signs of past life within Martian rocks.

In the meantime, team scientists are plotting how the rover might travel from its landing site — named after the science fiction writer Octavia Butler — to the 40-metre-high cliffs of the ancient river delta that drew Perseverance to Jezero in the first place. The delta, deposited billions of years ago by a river flowing on Mars, would have been an ideal landscape for ancient microbial life, if it existed. But a treacherous dune field lies between Perseverance and the delta, which the rover cannot cross. Researchers are discussing whether to drive clockwise or counterclockwise around the dune field; the latter would be a shorter trip, while the former would pass next to a greater variety of interesting rocks.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover's Navcam

The rover has been snapping photos of the rocks surrounding it since it landed on 18 February.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

But none of this is likely to happen until June at the earliest. First, Perseverance must drive to a suitable spot to test Ingenuity, its helicopter. The spot will probably be a rock-strewn area not too far from the rover's current location. There, the rover will lower Ingenuity from its belly, drive off a safe distance and shoot a video as the helicopter takes to the Martian skies. “We’re looking forward to those historic, aviation-first movies,” said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe who leads one of the rover’s camera teams. The helicopter test comes first because Ingenuity will fly with the rover as it drives, helping Perseverance navigate its way across the landscape.

Until that first flight test, expected in the coming weeks, team scientists have been exploring the rocks around the landing site. Immediately surrounding the rover are lighter-coloured rocks peeking out from dark soil. Perseverance has used a laser-based instrument to determine that several of these rocks, including two that team scientists named Máaz and Yeegho, are chemically similar to basaltic rocks on Earth, which form from molten rock. The instrument zaps rocks with a laser to vaporize small portions and study their chemical makeup. Through this analysis, the scientists see that Yeegho shows signs of having water locked up in its minerals, said Roger Wiens, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who is head of the laser instrument team. These discoveries fit with what scientists had expected from Jezero — that it might have volcanic rocks on the crater floor, which could have interacted with water over time.

Máaz rock is the first feature of scientific interest to be studied by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover

Máaz is one of the rocks that Perseverance has so far studied with a laser-based instrument. The rover has determined it is chemically similar to basaltic rocks on Earth.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Many of the rocks around the landing site appear to have been sculpted by strong winds, including a dark, odd-shaped object that scientists have dubbed the ‘harbour seal’, for its similarity to a seal perching on a rock. The winds seem to have scoured the rocks primarily from the northwest, a direction that matches the major wind patterns calculated by global circulation models for Mars, said Bell.

Another dark-coloured rock looks as if it has been weathered not by wind but by water, said Farley. That suggests it could have been tumbled around in running water — perhaps in the ancient river flowing into Jezero, or in its lake. “This is quite promising for our study,” he said.

Perseverance scientists have been giving informal names to rocks, craters and other objects around the landing site in the Navajo or Diné language. Following a tradition from earlier Mars landings, the scientists are choosing themes for names based on geologic maps of Jezero, which are divided into sections named after national parks on Earth. Perseverance happened to land in the section named after Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which is in Arizona on Navajo tribal lands. Aaron Yazzie, an engineer on the rover team, is a member of the Navajo Nation and has led the effort to coordinate the names. Máaz, for instance, means Mars, while Yeehgo is an alternative spelling of the word for ‘diligent’.

After the helicopter test, and before Perseverance sets off for the delta, the rover will probably drill its first rock sample into the dark, fractured rock that makes up much of the Jezero Crater floor. Scientists have not yet determined whether this rock is volcanic, but if it is, it could help determine the age of the crater floor because molten rock traps radioactive elements that decay at a predictable rate and can be used as a clock to date when the material was originally molten.

During its mission, Perseverance will collect approximately 30 tubes full of Martian rock and soil, laying them down on the Martian surface so a future mission can retrieve them and fly them back to Earth for scientists to analyse, no earlier than 2031. It will be the first-ever sample return from Mars.

Quelle: nature

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Update: 18.03.2021

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Mars rover sends back grinding, squealing sounds of driving

NASA's newest Mars rover has sent back the first-ever sounds of driving on the red planet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA’s newest Mars rover has sent back the first-ever sounds of driving on the red planet — a grinding, clanking, banging affair that by Earth standards would be pretty worrisome.

The noises made by Perseverance's six metal wheels and suspension on the first test drive two weeks ago are part of a 16-minute raw audio feed released Wednesday by Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“If I heard these sounds driving my car, I’d pull over and call for a tow,” Dave Gruel, an engineer on the rover team, said in a written NASA statement. “But if you take a minute to consider what you’re hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense.”

Perseverance — the biggest, most advanced rover ever sent to Mars — landed near an ancient river delta on Feb. 18 to search for signs of past life. Samples will be taken from the most promising rocks for eventual return to Earth.

The rover carries two microphones. One already has captured the sounds of wind and rock-zapping lasers, the other was meant to record the descent and landing. This second mike didn't pick up any sounds of the rover's arrival at Mars, but managed to record the first test drive March 4.

The driving audio contains a unexpected high-pitched scratching noise, according to NASA. Engineers are trying to figure it out.

Before it starts drilling into rocks for core samples, Perseverance will drop off an experimental tag-along helicopter, named Ingenuity. The helicopter will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet sometime next month.

Quelle: abcNews

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Perseverance rover records sounds of driving on Mars

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NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard left Navigation Camera (Navcam) on March 7, the same day the rover’s microphone recorded the sounds of driving. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance rover has recorded the crunching, rattling sound of its six metallic wheels rolling across Mars.

Perseverance carries the first microphones ever sent to Mars, and the mission already beamed back sounds of Martian winds and audio of one of the rover’s instruments firing a laser at a rock.

The microphone that recorded the sounds of driving was supposed to capture audio during Perseverance’s landing inside Mars’s Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. But the recording was lost due to malfunction in a system that was programmed to digitize the audio for storage on the rover’s computer.

Nevertheless, the microphone is still functional, and NASA released an audio clip a few days after landing of a wind gust on the surface of Mars. It was the first recording of natural sound from another planet.

Now NASA has released another audio recording captured as the rover drove across Martian soil.

The rover’s aluminum wheels are about 20.7 inches (52.5 centimeters) in diameter. The six wheels have cleats for traction and titanium spokes for “springy support,” NASA says.

“A lot of people, when they see the images, don’t appreciate that the wheels are metal,” said Vandi Verma, a senior engineer and rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “When you’re driving with these wheels on rocks, it’s actually very noisy.”

NASA released two versions of the audio — one 90-second file edited and processed to filter out background noise, and another 16-minute clip with raw, unfiltered sound. The short and long versions are posted below.

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“If I heard these sounds driving my car, I’d pull over and call for a tow,” said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for Mars 2020’s EDL Camera and Microphone subsystem. “But if you take a minute to consider what you’re hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense.”

Perseverance recorded the sounds during a 90-foot (27.3-meter) drive March 7, according to NASA. The rover’s top speed is a little less than 0.1 mph, or about 152 meters per hour.

The longer, raw audio clip includes a high-pitched scratching noise. The origin of the sound remains a mystery.

“Perseverance’s engineering team continues to evaluate the source of the scratching noise, which may either be electromagnetic interference from one of the rover’s electronics boxes or interactions between the mobility system and the Martian surface,” NASA said in a statement. “The EDL microphone was not intended for surface operations and had limited testing in this configuration before launch.”

Sounds travel much differently on Mars than on Earth. The Martian atmosphere is less than 1 percent the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level, and is primarily made up of carbon dioxide, not nitrogen and oxygen.

Last week, scientists working on the rover’s SuperCam instrument released an audio recording from a different microphone on the Perseverance rover.

The SuperCam instrument, developed in partnership between U.S. and French scientists, is designed to measure the composition of rocks using cameras, a laser, spectrometers, and a microphone.

The microphone on the SuperCam instrument is an aid for scientists to understand the physical properties of Martian rocks and soils.

“This is a very important technique in order to determine the hardness of samples,” said Naomi Murdoch, a SuperCam team member from the Institut Supérieur de l’ Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France.

One of the primary goals of the $2.7 billion Perseverance rover mission is to gather, seal, and cache samples on Mars for retrieval by a robotic return mission in the late 2020s. Data from SuperCam can help identify organic molecules — the building blocks of life — and help ground teams determine which rocks Perseverance should drill and sample for return to Earth.

Ground teams hope to use Perseverance’s microphones in the future to record the sound of the rover’s drill coring out the rock specimens.

Quelle: SN

 

 

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