The Perseverance rover, the most complex exploration vehicle ever sent to Mars, has successfully completed the first year of its long mission to search for traces of past life on the red planet, keeping scientists around the world in suspense.
On February 18, 2021, NASA’s rover landed on Mars after a seven-month voyage. The entire world held its breath as the equipment descended through the thin Martian atmosphere. Seven long minutes of “terror” ended in immense relief, as the vehicle arrived safely at an ancient lake, Jezero Crater.
Then there were three months of exploration in a very hostile area.
“The Martian soil is a dangerous terrain, full of rocks and large dunes,” Pernelle Bernardi, an engineer at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) responsible for the Franco-American instrument SuperCam, told AFP. ” from Perseverance.
In its early days, the equipment was able to record sounds and transmit them to Earth’s inhabitants.
“It was one of the great discoveries of the year. No one had heard Mars ‘speak’ before!” recalls Sylvestre Maurice, Co-Director of Science at SuperCam and an astrophysicist at the University of Toulouse.
Together with American scientists, Maurice is also in charge of the Curiosity robot, which explores the red planet thousands of kilometers away from Perseverance, in Gale Crater.
‘A new world’
“We are addicted, discovering a new world, a bit like the explorers of the 15th century”, he explains.
Every day, the specialist reviews with his team the latest information detected by the vehicle.
“In 12 months, we collected an infinity of data on mineralogy, atmosphere and meteorology, and tens of thousands of images”, he says.
In addition, the mission’s first anniversary date coincides with the one-millionth laser beam on Mars, a technology designed to detect the chemical composition of rocks: about 885,000 of these shots were performed by Curiosity and the other 125,000 by Perseverance.
The most difficult thing, however, is to pilot the vehicle, a mission shared alternately and jointly every two weeks between CNES (the French space agency) in Toulouse and the National Laboratory of Los Alamos (LANL). , in the United States.
Daily, between 100 and 200 people are responsible for moving the equipment. “When a team wants to drive, the battery team will say ‘wait, we’re out of power, we need to recharge'”, exemplifies the scientist.
“It can be frustrating, but most of the time it’s consensual… Americans have a true culture of commitment”, says Nicolas Mangold, CNRS researcher responsible for SuperCam. For him, the most difficult thing this year was the impossibility of getting together physically due to the pandemic.
So far, Perseverance has covered four kilometers, including a record 500 meters last weekend.
But there’s no need to rush: the mission’s objective is to collect 40 well-chosen samples over six years, which will have to be brought to Earth in another mission, scheduled for the 2030s.
“You have to be patient, Perseverance is like a tortoise, but very smart,” says Jim Bell, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, who is in charge of the Mastcam-Z instrument.
heading for the delta
The rover has already collected seven samples, but one of them failed as it was empty. “It’s a slow learning curve, but given the limitations, I’m the happiest scientist,” says the American astrophysicist.
Bell recalls the historic flight of the Ingenuity helicopter, the rover’s explorer, especially when, in the second half of 2021, Perseverance revealed that the landing site had been chosen very well.
“We only had images from orbit, which suggested that it was a lacustrine environment. However, when we looked closer, in surface images, we effectively realized that we were in an ancient lake, fed by a river in delta, like the Mississippi [EUA] or the Mekong [Vietnã]… It was a total turnaround”, he explains.
After the first steps at the bottom of the crater, Perseverance will head towards the delta, located about two kilometers away, but separated by a dune. “We’re very excited!” says Jim Bell
It is precisely this environment with a fertile past, where mineral elements were accumulated, that is most favorable for the development of microbial life.
“River deposits are the most likely to record traces” of these early organisms, if they ever existed on Mars, concludes Nicolas Mangold.
