[slate]
[slate] Hi I’m Keith Comeaux. I am
the launch, cruise, EDL mission manager for the
Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. [slate]
[slate]
This rover is really special because it really
begins our journey to bring samples back from Mars
back to Earth for scientists to study here.
and that really gives us the capability to bring to bear
all of the science, scientific instruments and
knowledge that we have not just today but in the future to look at
those rocks and to study them and to really get to know Mars
better than we have ever in the past. [slate]
[slate]
[slate] Perseverance is scheduled to land in Jezero Crater.
Um Jezero Crater is a very intriguing place.
It’s a small crater that was actually on Curiosity’s landing site list
but it didn’t make it because it was too dangerous to land there. And the reason
is its because it’s a small crater which used to host a lake, and we
can clearly see an inlet channel and an exit channel from that crater,
as well as a very well preserved river delta,
if you will, at the bottom of the crater. Several billion years ago
this was, this crater was the host to a lake with
running water through it, and that’s very intriguing, very
enticing for scientists to go look and study and see what
if that particular area was habitable at some time
in the past on Mars. And whether or not there could be evidence of
past organisms that are preserved in the rock. [slate]
[slate]
Well I think the holy grail of astrobiology is has life originated elsewhere other than
on planet Earth. And that is
one of the prime themes of our mission on Perseverance and the subsequent mission on the sample
return mission that will go there and fetch those samples
to bring them back to Earth. You know if we are able to
conclusively demonstrate that there’s evidence of past life on Mars, I think
that will really open up a lot of people’s minds about
you know what our role is in the universe. [slate]
[slate]
[slate] Great question.
So what will be going through my mind during landing? So landing
is one of the most dangerous things that we do in spaceflight.
Landing on another planet or the moon or an asteroid.
It’s very dangerous, it’s very intricate, many, many things have to go right.
Clearly we did this before with Curiosity,
and we’ve inherited a lot of the technical designs from Curiosity and we’re using them
again on Perseverance. But there’s a couple of new things we have as well
[slate]
The centerpiece of our rover design this time around is what we call the sample-caching
system. it’s a very intricate system that’s built inside
the rover and it works in concert with the robotic arm and the drill
that we have at the end of the robotic arm. And that
drill will take rock samples, cores out of
the rock and it will transfer them into the
sample-caching system which has another robot arm
which takes that sample and then processes it to the point where we seal it
inside of a titanium tube. And we’ll
take many collections of rock samples and soil samples in such a fashion
and then we will place those samples on the surface of Mars.
We cache them at a place that, where a future fetch rover
will be able to find them, pick them and bring them to a
Mars ascent vehicle which will take them into orbit around Mars, to another
orbiter which will be waiting and bring them back to Earth.
[slate]
Well I think the question i would like to see answered is,
has life ever originated anywhere else but Earth?
Mars seems like it could have been one of those places in the distant past that
could have hosted life and you know Perseverance is built with the tools
to help find the evidence of that past life.
And so I think that would be the real icing on the cake if we were to actually
find fossilized microbes
buried in the rocks somewhere in Jezero Crater.. [slate]
[slate]
[slate] Well landing anything
on any other celestial body is super difficult.
Typically it’s never been done before.
Hundreds of thousands of parts and software lines of code
all have to be designed and built just right, and tested
to make sure they’ll work. They have to do the job.
And the testing is hard to do because we can’t really replicate
the conditions that these devices will see in space
here on Earth. Gravity is different, the atmosphere is different.
Temperatures are different. And so we do
the best we can to simulate all the effects that we expect to see once we get to
to Mars and other places. But it really is um
a difficult thing to do. A lot of things have to go right. And we see that
in the evidence of all the past missions that have attempted to go to Mars.
[slate]
If you are interested in following us all the way to Mars there’s a website out there - mars
dot-nasa-dot-gov. And you can
look at all the Mars missions from there but just look for Perseverance
and click on through there are many different things that you can explore on that website.
Including our team, the instruments, the science, Jezero Crater
You can look at our landing site. Um so there’s lots
to explore there. [slate]
[slate]
Very excited! Looking forward to a great landing and you know
in about a decade hopefully rocks coming back from Mars
to Earth.