NASA Selects Jezero Crater as the Landing Site for the Upcoming Mars 2020 Rover Mission

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NASA has selected Jezero Crater as the landing site for their upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission after a five-year search. This search involved scrutinizing and debating every available detail of over 60 candidate locations on Mars by the mission team and the planetary science community.

NASA’s rover mission is set to launch in July 2020 as the space agency’s next step in the exploration of Mars. The mission will look for signs of ancient habitable conditions and past microbial life, and the rover will also gather rock and soil samples and store them in a cache on the planet’s surface. NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are looking into future mission concepts to retrieve the samples and send them back to Earth, so this landing site sets the bar for the next ten years of Mars exploration.

Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, explained that the landing site in Jezero Crater provides geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could answer vital questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology. Zurbuchen added that gathering those samples from this unique area will transform how we think about Mars and its ability to host life.

Jezero Crater is situated on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a massive impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Western Isidis holds some of the oldest and most scientifically interesting landscapes the Red Planet has to offer. Mission scientists think that the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometre) crater, which once housed an ancient river delta, could have gathered and preserved ancient organic molecules and other possible signs of microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater billions of years ago.

Jezero Crater’s ancient lake-delta system provides many promising sampling targets of at least five different kinds of rock, such as clays and carbonates that have high a chance of preserving signatures of past life. Moreover, the material carried into the delta from a large watershed could hold various kinds of minerals from inside and outside the crater.

The geologic diversity that makes Jezero so enticing to Mars 2020 scientists also makes it a challenge for the team’s entry, descent and landing (EDL) engineers. For one, there is the massive nearby river delta and small crater impacts, and for two, the site contains many boulders and rocks to the east, cliffs to the west, and depressions filled with aeolian bedforms (wind-derived ripples in the sand that could trap a rover) in several locations.

Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Explained that the Mars community has long coveted the scientific value of sites like the Jezero Crater, and another previous mission thought about going there. However, the challenges with safely landing were considered impossible. But now it is conceivable, due to the 2020 engineering team and advances in Mars entry, descent and landing technologies.

When the team began to search for the best landing site, mission engineers already had refined the landing system in a way that they were able to reduce the Mars 2020 landing zone to an area 50 percent smaller than that for the landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover at Gale Crater in 2012. This enabled the science community to think about more challenging landing sites. The sites of greatest scientific interest made NASA add a new ability known as Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN). TRN will allow for the “sky crane” descent stage, the rocket-powered system that carries the rover down to the surface, to circumvent dangerous areas.

Choosing this site depends upon extensive analyses and verification testing of the TRN’s ability. A final report will be presented to an independent review board and NASA Headquarters in the fall of 2019.

Zurbuchen stated that nothing has been more challenging in robotic planetary exploration than landing on Mars. The Mars 2020 engineering team has performed a massive amount of work to prepare them for this decision. The team will continue their work so they can deeply understand the TRN system and the risks involved, and they will review the findings independently to reassure maximum chances for success.

Choosing a landing site this early enables the rover drivers and science operations team to optimize their plans for exploring Jezero Crater once the rover is safely on the ground. With data from NASA’s fleet of Mars orbiters, they will chart the terrain in better detail and detect areas of interest — places with the most exciting geological features, for example — where Mars 2020 could gather the best science samples.

The Mars 2020 Project at JPL manages rover development for SMD. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management. Mars 2020 will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

For more information on Mars 2020, visit https://www.nasa.gov/mars2020

More information about NASA’s exploration of Mars is available online at https://www.nasa.gov/mars

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-announces-landing-site-for-mars-2020-rover

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Source: Asgardia Space News

Submitted November 21, 2018 at 04:40AM by AsgardiaTeam https://ift.tt/2zo4zwB