Perseverance: The Search for Martian Life Continues
- Amrutha Tummala
- Mar 15, 2021
- 2 min read
By Amrutha Tummala, Tech Blog Chief Editor
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
FEBRUARY 18, 2021--PERSEVERANCE TOUCHES DOWN ON THE RED PLANET
Overview
NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, was launched last year on July 30 and finally landed at 12:55 PM PST on February 28, 2021 in Jezero Crater, Mars. The objective of the Mars 2020 mission is to seek signs of ancient life on Mars, collect samples of martian rock and soil to bring back to Earth, and pave the way for future human expeditions to Mars. In addition, the Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, was strapped to Perseverance as a technology demonstration to test powered flight on Mars. The duration of the mission is at least one Mars year, or 687 Earth days.
The Search for Ancient Life
Earlier missions that had been sent to Mars already established that liquid water did exist on Mars at some point in the past. Curiosity, a previous rover, found nutrients and energy sources on Mars that microbes might have used to survive. It also discovered that Mars has regions that could have been habitable in the past. Perseverance takes the research a step further, looking for signs of life itself.
Jezero Crater, the landing site of Perseverance, was chosen over the course of a thorough five year study among sixty different appealing and unique candidates. It has all the qualities that would have made it friendly to life in the past, one of which is that Jezero Crater was once the site of a river delta, flooded with water to the point that the crater used to be a lake. This was revealed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s CRISM Instrument, which identified that the crater contains clays that only form in the presence of water, similar to clays found in the Mississippi river delta. Perseverance will search the lakebed and shoreline and collect rock samples as old as 3.6 billion years. These rocks might contain fossilized life, so they will be stored safely by Perseverance for a future mission to Mars to retrieve and transport back to Earth. The samples will also give scientists insight into the formation of rocky planets and what the environment of ancient Mars was like.
The landing of Perseverance has implications for more people than just scientists. We have always wondered whether or not we are alone in the universe, and Perseverance may find answers to that question. Even if it is the discovery of life long gone, the evidence of life on a planet other than Earth will be a massive step forward for all of humanity.
For a collection of images by NASA that are related to the Mars 2020 mission, use this link:
Works Cited
“Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover.” NASA, NASA, mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.
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