Mars 2020 Mission

by Bhathiya Senevirathne

You may already came across with the phrase “Get your boarding pass to mars”. This is related to the recent project that will take part by 2020.The reason to issue a boarding pass with the name of you in it is to uplift the engagement of public community, so what is fascinating about this boarding pass? Will they really take your name to mars? The answer is yes and they are capable of taking more than one million names. For this engineers and scientists will use an electron beam to stencil the submitted names onto a silicon chip and the lines of text on it will be smaller than one thousandth the width of a human hair, so nearly this is 75 nano meters. A single dime sized chip will be covered with a glass cover with more than one million names. All of your names will be taken to the red planet with the help of a ROVER.

Mars is often referred as the “Red Planet” due to its color which is given by the  iron oxides in the atmosphere of mars, becoming the forth planet from the Sun and also days, seasons and inclination of the axis which are likewise comparable to earth, scientist predict that mars was an active planet in the  past. These are not only predictions there are number of hints through the explorations and discoveries which have been done so far.so mars 2020 mission is the next big step towards the exploration of the red planet and which will be able to find out answers to many dilemmas. This is not just sending a rover to mars and just ridding it through the lands of mars. Scientist have partitioned the rover to explore several areas of means. A rover is a motor vehicle that travel across the surface of the planet, remember this will have variety of features rather than travelling.

Main objectives of the mission is to seek signs of past life and critically search out potential evidence for bio signatures. So the rover will thoroughly look for any type of evidence of ancient microbial life. Apart from this rover will collect well documented set of rocks and soil particles from the surface of the planet and also another objective is to demonstrate future robotic and some steps to extract oxygen from the atmosphere of mars.                    

Mars rover will have mainly “seven” key featured hardware instruments to conduct explorations and investigations on the planet mars.

1)Mastcam-Z: An advanced camera system with advanced panoramic and stereoscopic imaging and capable to zoom. The principal investigator is James Bell, Arizona State University in Tempe.

2) Supercam: Instrument capable of taking images, chemical composition analysis and mineralogy and this can detect any organic compound from rocks even with a distance. The principal investigator is Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Los Alamos, New Mexico. This instrument also has a significant contribution from the Centre National d’Etudes Spatulas,  Institut de Recherché en Astrophysique et Planétologie (CNES/IRAP) France.

3) Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL): A spectrometer with the help of X-ray and also capable of taking high resolution images and able of detecting and analyzing of chemical elements. The principal investigator is Abigail Allwood, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

      

4) Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC):A spectrometer that will provide fine scale imaging which uses ultra violet(U.V) laser rays and mainly focused on determine fine scale mineralogy and to detect organic compounds. SHERLOC also uses an advance camera which can take microscopic images of the surface and this will be the first U.V Raman spectrometer to fly to mars. The principal investigator is Luther Beegle, JPL.

5) The Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE): An exploration technology investigation system that will focus on producing oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of mars. The principal investigator is Michael Hecht, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

6) Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA): Complete set of sensors that will be taking measurements of surface temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity pressure and dust size. The principal investigator is Jose RodriguezManfredi, Centro de Astrobiologia, Instituto National de Tecnica Aeroespacial, Spain.

7) The Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX): This is a ground penetrating radar that will mainly focused on the geological structure of surface. The principal investigator is Svein-Erik Hamran, the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, Norway.

The power source of the rover uses the heat from the natural decay of plutonium-238 to generate electricity.

By looking at the hardware setup its crystal clear  that this is not just a safari on Mars, this can be the next step to many discoveries and someday humans will live in their own habitats on the surface of mars. There is another project that will take humans to the moon in 2024 and all of these projects will be connected with the mars mission in near future. Stay tuned and make sure to send your name to the red planet.

Mars 2020 mission;

Launch window: July 17-Aug 5, 2020

Landing on Mars: Feb 18, 2021

Mission duration on mars: At least one mars years(about 687 earth days)

References and images:

www.nasa.gov

https://bgr.com

https://interpidmuseum.org