On the 22nd of July, another important launch will take place this year. In fact, one of the most important launches of the last year is the Mars 2020 Mission. The Rover Mars Perseverance will be launched by ULA's Atlas V rocket, from Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The rover will make further explorations of the Martian. The launch window of the Atlas V rocket with the Perseverance rover is planned until August 11th.
The rover is the most modern to be sent to Mars, it will the other rovers already sent, the last one reached Mars in 2012, it is the Curiosity rover, which recently sent a photo of Earth and Venus.
Among the various curiosities of Perseverance is the helicopter that will be used on our neighboring planet, that's right, NASA, together with JPL-Caltech and Lockheed Martin Space designed a drone-helicopter to carry out experimental flights on Mars.
But how does this helicopter work?
The focus of the mission of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (official name of the drone-helicopter), is to prove that controlled flight on Mars is possible.
Ingenuity is installed in the belly of the Perseverance rover and needs to get out safely. For this, tests were carried out and we can see how this phase of the mission will work in the video below:
“The device is unlike any other helicopter ever built, because controlled flight on Mars is unlike anything that has ever been attempted,” said MiMi Aung, Mars Helicopter project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "And then we had to figure out how to hitch a ride and be safely deployed from the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover." ingenuity has computers, cameras, batteries and the like, its weight is 2Kg
Detaching Perseverance will take place about two months after the rover lands. It is necessary to study the right place for the operation of the small helicopter, according to the scientists, the release of the helicopter and the first flight are the most delicate steps of the mission.
“The process itself consists of “a locking mechanism that holds the helicopter in place. Next, a cable-cutting pyrotechnic device is triggered, allowing a spring-loaded arm holding the helicopter to begin rotating the device out of its horizontal position. Along the way, a small electric motor will pull the arm until it locks, leaving the body of the helicopter completely vertical with two of its spring-loaded landing legs. Another pyrotechnic fire, freeing the other legs.”
Ingenuity's battery power source is by solar , something that is very common in space vehicles.
The reason for a helicopter on Mars:
Thinking about a possible future for manned missions to Mars, helicopter drones can act as crew scouts, transport cargo, investigate caves and other holes that an astronaut cannot enter, among others. necessary to send a test helicopter to carry out such missions.
The Mars 2020 Mission:
The focus of the mission will have a deeper focus on discovering signs of past microbial life. The rover will carry out experiments collecting samples for a possible return of the rover to Earth.
The rover's landing site is calculated to be at Jazero Crater. The arrival of Perseverance is planned for February 18, 2021, thus totaling almost eight months of travel between Earth and Mars, which, as a matter of curiosity, the distance is more or less 100 million kilometers.
Crew Dragon launch and comeback:
At the beginning of this article it was said that this would be one of the important launches of this year, the first one was in May with the astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, who went into space on Space X's Crew Dragon. Currently, the astronauts are on the International Space Station (ISS) along with three other crew who were already there, one US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts.
This week it was said by NASA that the tests with SpaceX's Crew Dragon on the ISS so far are going well and the return of Dragon with astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken should happen on August 2nd.
Mission Artemis: Moon in 2024:
Other manned missions should take place in the coming years, one of them is the Artemis mission, which will be the return of a man and a woman to the Moon for the first time. The forecast for this mission is for 2024. The video below explains how this mission will be:
