Space

NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission will be a big step in Mars Exploration

By Anees Shah

Posted on January 8, 2020

Mars 2020 is a Mars Rover mission by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, which is scheduled to be launch on July 17, 2020. It is clear that Mars remains a mystery. NASA is about to send its new robotic cart, the Mars 2020, which will seek to answer fundamental questions about the red planet, including its current and past life possibilities. It will be a big step in Mars exploration.

The Curiosity rover, the previous Mars Mission was a success for NASA, as the robotic cart has moved through the Martian soil and has taken hundreds of thousands of photographs, analyzed the samples of the terrain, investigate the geology and climate of the red planet, and opened its results to new questions. The Curiosity rover is still operational on Mars, and as of January 8, 2020, the rover has been on the red planet for 2710 total days since landing on August 6, 2012.

Therefore, from this experience, NASA has worked on its new robotic mission, the Mars 2020, which is built on a sterilized site in the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

Also Read: China Mars Mission: China is planning to send a probe to Mars in 2020

Last Friday, a series of journalists were invited to see the progress of NASA Mars mission 2020, which will be launched from Cape Canaveral in July 2020. Its journey to the red planet will last approximately 7 months (to arrive in February 2021), and this will be the fifth robotic cart sent to Mars.

Mars 2020 Rover Features:

“It has been designed to look for signs of life, so it has a number of different instruments that can help us see the chemical and geological context of the surface on Mars,” said mission leader Matt Wallace. The Mars 2020 has 23 cameras, two “ears” that will allow you to hear the Martian wind and laser beams to do chemical analysis.

The size of the Mars 2020 robotic cart is that of a small car. It has six wheels like the Curiosity, to be able to move even in rocky terrain. Here at speed, it is not a priority, so it is expected that it can cover around 70 meters per Martian day, which is roughly equal to the day on Earth.

Its source of power is nuclear, so it will not be depending on solar cells that prevent its movement in times of dust storms, as has happened with the previous carts. It has an arm of almost 3 meters in length to be able to drill and open rocks in places where scientists consider, there may be signs of life (present and past).

We are looking for ancient microbial life – we talk about billions of years when Mars was much more like Earth,” Wallace said.

Also Read: Hidden under ice, Researchers discover Water Lake at Mars South Pole

Before the red planet had much more water, a thicker atmosphere, and a magnetic force around it, explained the mission leader. When samples are obtained, they will be sealed tightly in tubes that are inside the robotic cart. It is expected that such samples may eventually be brought to Earth via a mission, perhaps manned.

“The samples could return to Earth in about a decade,” concludes Wallace. Obviously, NASA’s plans are very ambitious, but at the moment they are already working on how they will place Mars 2020 on the Martian surface.

Mars Mission 2020 landing site:

NASA has decided that Mars 2020 rover reaches an area called Jezero, which has a crater with a deep lake of about 457 meters, which was formed 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago. It measures 46 kilometers and experts want to believe that it could well preserve organic molecules. The mission, on the other hand, hopes to give more light to many of the conditions that humans could have if they landed at some future time on the red planet.