What is Happening on Mars Now?

#mars #mars2020 #jezerocrater #perseverancerover #ingenuity
What is happening on MARS NOW?
4.5 billion years ago, a planet half the size of Earth was formed, it was later named as Mars. Like Earth, Mars has a central core, a rocky mantle, and a solid crust.

In 1610, Galileo Gallie observed Mars for the first time with a telescope. It is believed and accepted that somewhere in past Mars had abundant water, but liquid water has now disappeared from the Martian surface.

From millions of years, atmosphere warming, frequent dust storms and superstorms have done a tremendous damage to Martian water bodies. Some researchers believe that most of the water has escaped from the Martian environment, and the remaining water in the form of ice is also escaping slowly, but steadily.

Inquisitiveness has driven us to know more about Mars. In 1960, the then Soviet Union launched a first probe to Mars. The plan was to flyby Mars but it failed to achieve Earth’s orbit.

Finally, NASA launched Mariner 4 on 28th November 1964. Mariner 4 successfully flyby Mars on 15th July 1965. From then on, numerous missions to mars have been launched and many of them have been successful.

On 30th July 2020, NASA launched its most successful mission to mars. The name of the mission is Mars 2020. The main goal of the mission is to launch Perseverance rover in a Jezero crater on Mars.

On February 18, 2021, Perseverance landed successfully on Martian surface. Upon landing, perseverance rover started its mission immediately, which is to collect data, and samples of rocks and soil in order to find the signs of life in past and present on Martian surface.

With Perseverance rover, NASA also launched a small helicopter called Ingenuity. Ingenuity is the first powered flight on mars. The main goal of Ingenuity is to observe areas of interest, for possible examinations by the Perseverance rover.

One of the objectives of the Perseverance rover is to collect Martian rock and soil samples. In September 2021 Perseverance rover achieved that task successfully by using its robotic arm in extracting a rock core about 6 centimeter long, and securing it in a specially designed tube.

However, Bringing the sample back to earth is a very complex task. If everything goes well, it will be done in a separate mission and will be achieved by multiple spacecrafts.

The estimated date the precious samples will reach Earth will be during the year 2031.

Apart from taking samples, perseverance rover has confirmed that Jezero crater was once a lake which was being fed by a nearby river.
Scientists have now a firm belief that the samples from Jezero crater could contain an ancient aqueous life fossils.

Perseverance was designed to last for 2 earth years, but, theoretically it can operate for another decade. We hope that Perseverance and Ingenuity team will reveal incredible facts about mars in years to come.