Astronomers sight wandering huge black hole, but at a safe distance

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


Located at the centre of a galaxy named J0437+2456, this supermassive black hole has a mass about three million times that of our Sun

Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole (SMBH) moving on its own. That is, the SMBH is moving with a velocity different from that of its surrounding galaxy.

This is surprising because supermassive black holes usually are not expected to move with respect to the galaxies in whose centres they reside, according to what is known about them so far. Supermassive black holes have masses millions of times the solar mass and inhabit the centres of galaxies. The one at the centre of the Milky Way is named Sagittarius A*.

Located at the centre of a galaxy named J0437+2456, this supermassive black hole, with a mass about three million times that of our Sun, is moving at a high speed. Viewing it from the safe distance of 230 million light years, the astronomers say in the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, that this fact makes it seem as though the supermassive black hole has been disturbed. The reason for this is unknown, though there are guesses.

 

One of the possibilities is that this SMBH has just been created from the collision of two SMBHs, because in such cases the newborn black hole suffers a recoil, which might be what is being observed here. The other possibility is that this black hole may be a part of a binary black hole system – which have not been observed so far.

Further observations are needed to pinpoint the reason for the movement of the supermassive blackhole.

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Support Quality Journalism.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper, crossword and print.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Mars on Earth: Turkish lake may hold clues to ancient life on planet

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


Scientists believe that the sediments around the lake eroded from large mounds that are formed with the help of microbes

As NASA’s rover Perseverance explores the surface of Mars, scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the distant planet are using data gathered on a mission much closer to home at a lake in southwest Turkey.

NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the nearest match on earth to those around the Jezero Crater where the spacecraft landed and which is believed to have once been flooded with water.

Information gathered from Lake Salda may help the scientists as they search for fossilised traces of microbial life preserved in sediment thought to have been deposited around the delta and the long-vanished lake it once fed.

“Salda…will serve as a powerful analogue in which we can learn and interrogate,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, told Reuters.

Professor Latif Kurt of Ankara University and Umit Turan from Turkish Environment Ministry inspect the shoreline of Salda Lake in Burdur province, Turkey, March 1, 2021.

Professor Latif Kurt of Ankara University and Umit Turan from Turkish Environment Ministry inspect the shoreline of Salda Lake in Burdur province, Turkey, March 1, 2021.  
| Photo Credit:
REUTERS

A team of American and Turkish planetary scientists carried out research in 2019 on the shorelines of the lake, known as Turkey’s Maldives because of its azure water and white shores.

Scientists believe that the sediments around the lake eroded from large mounds that are formed with the help of microbes and are known as microbialites.

The team behind the Perseverance rover, the most advanced astrobiology lab ever flown to another world, wants to find out whether there are microbialites in Jezero Crater.

 

They will also compare the beach sediments from Salda with carbonate minerals — formed from carbon dioxide and water, a key ingredient for life — detected on the margins of Jezero Crater.

“When we find something at Perseverance we can go back to look at Lake Salda to really look at both processes, (looking at) similarities but equally importantly differences that are really between Perseverance and Lake Salda,” Zurbuchen said. “So we are really glad we have that lake, just because I think it will be with us for a long time”.

Samples of rock drilled from Martian soil are to be stored on the surface for eventual retrieval and delivery to Earth by two future robotic missions, as early as 2031.

(Subscribe to Science For All, our weekly newsletter, where we aim to take the jargon out of science and put the fun in. Click here.)

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Support Quality Journalism.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper, crossword and print.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

ISRO develops radar for joint earth observation satellite mission with NASA

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


“NISAR” is a joint collaboration for a dual-frequency L and S-band SAR for earth observation.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has completed development of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capable of producing extremely high-resolution images for a joint earth observation satellite mission with the U.S. space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a joint collaboration for a dual-frequency L and S-band SAR for earth observation.

“NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet’s surface less than a centimetre across”, according to NASA.

NASA and Bengaluru-headquartered ISRO signed a partnership on September 30, 2014, to collaborate on and launch NISAR.

The mission is targeted to launch in early 2022 from ISRO’s Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district, about 100km north of Chennai.

NASA is providing the mission’s L-band SAR, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder and payload data subsystem.

ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle and associated launch services for the mission, whose goal is to make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes using advanced radar imaging.

The S-band SAR payload of NISAR satellite mission was flagged off by the Secretary in the Department of Space and ISRO Chairman K Sivan on March 4 through virtual mode.

The payload has been shipped from ISRO’s Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre (SAC) to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Pasadena in the U.S. for integration with the latter’s L-band SAR payload, an ISRO statement said.

“NISAR would provide a means of disentangling highly spatial and temporally complex processes ranging from ecosystem disturbances to ice sheet collapses and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides”, ISRO said.

NASA added that the mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces and ice masses, providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise and groundwater, and will support a host of other applications.

“NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally with 12-day regularity on ascending and descending passes, sampling Earth on average every six days for a baseline three-year mission”, NASA said on the mission’s website.

“This allows the mission to observe a wide range of Earth processes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes”.

NISAR uses a sophisticated information-processing technique known as SAR to produce extremely high-resolution images. Radar penetrates clouds and darkness, enabling NISAR to collect data day and night in any weather.

“The instrument’s imaging swath the width of the strip of data collected along the length of the orbit track is greater than 150 miles (240km), which allows it to image the entire Earth in 12 days,” it was stated.

“Over the course of multiple orbits, the radar images will allow users to track changes in croplands and hazard sites, as well as to monitor ongoing crises such as volcanic eruptions. The images will be detailed enough to show local changes and broad enough to measure regional trends.”

“As the mission continues for years, the data will allow for better understanding of the causes and consequences of land surface changes, increasing our ability to manage resources and prepare for and cope with global change,” according to NASA.

“NASA requires a minimum of three years of global science operations with the L-band radar, and ISRO requires five years of operations with the S-band radar over specified target areas in India and the Southern Ocean”, it said.

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Support Quality Journalism.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper, crossword and print.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

NASA’s Perseverance rover performs first test drive on Mars

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


As part of its mission, the rover would characterise the Red Planet’s geology and past climate, and pave the way for human exploration of Mars.

NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, performed its first test drive on the Red Planet, covering a distance of about 6.5 metres across the Martian landscape, a “major milestone” before it begins its science operations.

The drive lasted about 33 minutes, propelling the rover forward by four metres, where it then turned to the left by 150 degrees and backed up 2.5 metres into its new temporary parking space, the American space agency noted in a statement.

According to NASA, the drive served as a mobility test to check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on the Perseverance rover, which it said is a major milestone before the science operations get underway.

Also read | Decoded: the secret message on Mars rover’s giant parachute

“When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” said Anais Zarifian, the mobility test bed engineer of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

“This was our first chance to ‘kick the tires’ and take Perseverance out for a spin. The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years,” Zarifian said.

Regular commutes of over 200 metres are expected once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life, NASA said.

As part of its mission, the rover would characterise the Red Planet’s geology and past climate, and pave the way for human exploration of Mars.

It is also expected to be the first to collect and cache Martian rock and soil.

Also read | Perseverance rover’s exciting work to happen in coming weeks: NASA’s Vishnu Sridhar

Since its landing on Mars on February 18, the rover has undergone several routine checks, including a a software update, replacing the computer program that helped land Perseverance with one NASA will rely on to analyse the planet.

On March 2, NASA said its engineers unstowed the rover’s 2-metre-long robotic arm for the first time, flexing each of its five joints over the course of two hours.

All the while, the space agency said the rover continues to send down images from Mars using the most advanced suite of cameras ever to travel to the Red Planet.

“Every picture from Perseverance is relayed by either the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter, or NASA’s MAVEN, Mars Odyssey, or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They are important partners in our explorations and our discoveries,” said Justin Maki, chief engineer for imaging and the imaging scientist for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL.

The Hindu Science Quiz | All about Mars

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Support Quality Journalism.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper, crossword and print.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Perseverance rover’s exciting work to happen in coming weeks: NASA’s Vishnu Sridhar

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


Sridhar is a lead system engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California for SuperCam on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which is on a mission to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.

Vishnu Sridhar, a 27-year-old Indian-American lead system engineer with NASA’s Perseverance rover, has said that the most exciting work on the awe-inspiring Mars mission will happen in the coming weeks.

Mr Sridhar, who is from Queens, New York, is a lead system engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California for SuperCam on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which is on a mission to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.

He said some of the rover’s most exciting work will be done in the coming weeks.

“We’re going to be taking more images of Mars, we’re going to be shooting lasers with the SuperCam instrument, we’re going to be recording audio with our microphone, and eventually, soon in near future, we are going to deploy our helicopter, and do the first powered flight on Mars,” Mr Sridhar told ABC7 channel.

SuperCam is a remote-sensing instrument that will use laser spectroscopy to analyse the chemical composition of rocks on the Martian surface. It analyses terrain that the rover cannot reach. It is an instrument designed to scan rocks and minerals-from up to 20 feet away-to determine their chemical makeup.

The Perseverance rover was launched on July 30 last year and successfully landed on Mars on February 18 this year. The rover, the SuperCam, and its other devices together will help scientists search for clues of past life on Mars. Its predecessor Curiosity is still functioning eight years after landing on Mars. The two-year Perseverance mission is NASA’s latest and most advanced mission to find evidence of past life on Mars.

Mr Sridhar said it was important that the mission was happening despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“NASA missions are clearly trying to explore and answer the basic question. Perseverance is also trying to seek that, and eventually answer the question that was there life on Mars, was there life outside Earth, and it was definitely a tough period for us during COVID-19 and for everyone else around the globe,” he said.

“And that’s why I love the name of Perseverance because we persevered through the pandemic and there was a paradigm shift, we learned a lot about how to do engineering remotely. And we went through all that we learned and now we are successful on Mars and it’s a great achievement for humankind,” he said.

Mr Sridhar’s time at JPL over the past five years has been dedicated to Mars and is currently the instrument engineer for SuperCam on the Mars 2020 Rover.

“Summer 2019 was when instruments came in from France and Los Alamos and when we physically integrated SuperCam with the Perseverance rover. That’s something I will cherish for the rest of my life, to have touched and worked on a piece of hardware that’s on its way to Mars,” he reminisced.

The US space agency on Monday released the first audio from Mars, a faint recording of a gust of wind captured by the Perseverance rover. Perseverance will attempt to collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes to be sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for lab analysis.

The rover is only the fifth to set its wheels down on Mars. The feat was first accomplished in 1997, and all of them have been American. The US is aiming for an eventual human mission to the planet, though planning remains preliminary.

Mr Sridhar attended Aviation High School in Queens and grew up in Rego Park. He graduated in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and has always been fascinated by flight and space exploration.

“One of the key events that sparked my interest in space and exploration was watching National Geographic. The Carl Sagan TV show Cosmos,” he said.

According to his NASA profile page, while in elementary school he wanted to become a National Geographic photographer and travel the world.

Indian-American woman scientist Swati Mohan had also played a key role in NASA Mars rover landing.

Ms Mohan, who leads the guidance, navigation, and control operations of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, was the first to confirm that the rover had successfully touched down on the Martian surface.

“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking signs of past life,” Mohan announced, prompting her colleagues at NASA to fist-bump and break into celebrations.

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Support Quality Journalism.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper, crossword and print.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Decoded: the secret message on Mars rover’s giant parachute

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


Cape Canaveral (U.S.) The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team.

Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 21-metre parachute. He also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Mr. Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the nylon fabric to know how the parachute was oriented during descent. Turning it into a secret message was “super fun”, he said Tuesday.

 

Only about six people knew about the encoded message before Thursday’s landing, according to Mr. Clark. They waited until the parachute images came back before putting out a teaser during a televised news conference on Monday.

It took just a few hours for space fans to figure it out, Mr. Clark said. Next time, he noted, “I’ll have to be a little bit more creative.” “Dare Mighty Things” — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the centre’s walls. The trick was “trying to come up with a way of encoding it but not making it too obvious,” Mr. Clark said.

As for the GPS coordinates, the spot is 3 metres from the entrance to JPL’s visitor centre.

Another added touch not widely known until touchdown: Perseverance bears a plaque depicting all five of NASA’s Mars rovers in increasing size over the years — similar to the family car decals seen on Earth.

Deputy project manager Matt Wallace promises more so-called hidden Easter eggs. They should be visible once Perseverance’s 2-metre arm is deployed in a few days and starts photographing under the vehicle, and again when the rover is driving in a couple weeks.

“Definitely, definitely should keep a good lookout,” he urged.

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Support Quality Journalism.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper, crossword and print.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

NASA releases first audio from Mars, video of Perseverance rover landing

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


The video clip showed the deployment of the parachute and the rover’s touchdown on the surface of the Red Planet.

The U.S. space agency NASA on Monday released the first audio from Mars, a faint crackling recording of a gust of wind captured by the Perseverance rover

NASA also released the first video of last week’s landing of the rover, which is on a mission to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.

A microphone did not work during the rover’s descent to the surface, but it was able to capture audio once it landed on Mars.

NASA engineers played a 60-second recording.

“What you hear there 10 seconds in is an actual wind gust on the surface of Mars picked up by the microphone and sent back to us here on Earth,” said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for the camera and microphone system on Perseverance.

The high-definition video clip, lasting three minutes and 25 seconds, shows the deployment of a red-and-white parachute with a 70.5-foot-wide (21.5-meter-wide) canopy.

It shows the heat shield dropping away after protecting Perseverance during its entry into the Martian atmosphere and the rover’s touchdown in a cloud of dust in the Jezero Crater just north of the Red Planet’s equator.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been able to capture an event like the landing on Mars,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the mission.

“These are really amazing videos,” Mr. Watkins said. “We binge-watched them all weekend.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said the video of Perseverance’s descent is “the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit.”

‘Perseverance is healthy’

Jessica Samuels, Perseverance’s surface mission manager, said the rover was operating as expected so far and engineers were conducting an intensive check of its systems and instruments.

 

“I am happy to report that Perseverance is healthy and is continuing with activities as we have been planning them,” Ms. Samuels said.

She said the team was preparing for a flight by the rover’s small helicopter drone dubbed Ingenuity.

“The team is still evaluating,” she said. “We have not locked in a site yet.”

Ingenuity will attempt the first powered flight on another planet and will have to achieve lift in an atmosphere that is just one percent the density of Earth’s.

Perseverance was launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on the surface of Mars on Thursday.

Its prime mission will last just over two years but it is likely to remain operational well beyond that. Its predecessor Curiosity is still functioning eight years after landing on Mars.

Over the coming years, Perseverance will attempt to collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes to be sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for lab analysis.

About the size of an SUV, the craft weighs a ton, is equipped with a seven-foot-long robotic arm, has 19 cameras, two microphones and a suite of cutting-edge instruments.

Mars was warmer and wetter in its distant past, and while previous exploration has determined the planet was habitable, Perseverance is tasked with determining whether it was actually inhabited.

It will begin drilling its first samples in summer, and along the way it will deploy new instruments to scan for organic matter, map chemical composition and zap rocks with a laser to study the vapor.

One experiment involves an instrument that can convert oxygen from Mars’ primarily carbon dioxide atmosphere, much like a plant.

The idea is that humans eventually won’t need to carry their own oxygen on hypothetical future trips, which is crucial for rocket fuel as well as for breathing.

The rover is only the fifth to set its wheels down on Mars. The feat was first accomplished in 1997, and all of them have been American.

The United States is preparing for an eventual human mission to the planet, though planning remains very preliminary.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Microbes from Earth could temporarily survive on Mars: study

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


While not all the microbes survived the trip, one previously detected on the International Space Station, the black mold Aspergillus niger, could be revived after it returned home.

Some microbes found on Earth may temporarily survive on the surface of Mars, according to a study that could be vital for the success of future missions to the Red Planet.

The researchers from NASA and German Aerospace Center tested the endurance of microorganisms to Martian conditions by launching them into stratosphere, the second major layer of Earth’s atmosphere which closely represents key conditions on Mars.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, paves the way for understanding not only the threat of microbes to space missions, but also the opportunities for resource independence from Earth.

“We successfully tested a new way of exposing bacteria and fungi to Mars-like conditions by using a scientific balloon to fly our experimental equipment up to Earth’s stratosphere,” said Marta Filipa Cortesao, joint first author of the study from the German Aerospace Center. “Some microbes, in particular spores from the black mold fungus, were able to survive the trip, even when exposed to very high ultraviolet (UV) radiation”

When searching for extra-terrestrial life, the scientists need to be sure that anything that they discover has not just travelled from the Earth.

“With crewed long-term missions to Mars, we need to know how human-associated microorganisms would survive on the Red Planet, as some may pose a health risk to astronauts,” said joint first author Katharina Siems, also based at the German Aerospace Center. “In addition, some microbes could be invaluable for space exploration. They could help us produce food and material supplies independently from Earth, which will be crucial when far away from home.”

Many key characteristics of the environment at the Martian surface cannot be found or easily replicated at the surface of Earth, however in middle stratosphere the conditions are remarkably similar.

“We launched the microbes into the stratosphere inside the MARSBOx (Microbes in Atmosphere for Radiation, Survival and Biological Outcomes experiment) payload, which was kept at Martian pressure and filled with artificial Martian atmosphere throughout the mission,” explained Cortesao. “The box carried two sample layers, with the bottom layer shielded from radiation.”

This allowed the researchers to separate the effects of radiation from the other tested conditions: desiccation, atmosphere, and temperature fluctuation during the flight.

The top layer samples were exposed to more than a thousand times more UV radiation than levels that can cause sunburn on our skin, they said.

“While not all the microbes survived the trip, one previously detected on the International Space Station, the black mold Aspergillus niger, could be revived after it returned home,” Siems explained. “Microorganisms are closely-connected to us; our body, our food, our environment, so it is impossible to rule them out of space travel.”

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

‘Something we’ve never seen’ – Mars rover beams back selfie from moment before landing

[ad_1]

Read More/Less


The image was taken at the very end of the so-called “seven-minutes-of-terror” descent sequence

(Subscribe to Science For All, our weekly newsletter, where we aim to take the jargon out of science and put the fun in. Click here.)

NASA scientists on Friday presented striking early images from the picture-perfect landing of the Mars rover Perseverance, including a selfie of the six-wheeled vehicle dangling just above the surface of the Red Planet moments before touchdown.

The color photograph, likely to become an instant classic among memorable images from the history of spaceflight, was snapped by a camera mounted on the rocket-powered “sky crane” descent-stage just above the rover as the car-sized space vehicle was being lowered on Thursday to Martian soil.

The image was unveiled by mission managers during an online news briefing webcast from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) near Los Angeles less than 24 hours after the landing.

The picture, looking down on the rover, shows the entire vehicle suspended from three cables unspooled from the skycrane, along with an “umbilical” communications cord. Swirls of dust kicked up by the crane’s rocket thrusters are also visible.

 

Seconds later, the rover was gently planted on its wheels, its tethers were severed, and the sky crane – its job completed- flew off to crash a safe distance away, though not before photos and other data collected during the descent were transmitted to the rover for safe keeping.

The image of the dangling science lab, striking for its clarity and sense of motion, marks the first such close-up photo of a spacecraft landing on Mars, or any planet beyond Earth.

 

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” Aaron Stehura, a deputy lead for the mission’s descent and landing team, describing himself and colleagues as “awe-struck” when first viewing the image.

Instantly iconic

Adam Steltzner, chief engineer for the Perseverance project at JPL, said he found the image instantly iconic, comparable to the shot of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon in 1969, or the Voyager 1 probe’s images of Saturn in 1980.

He said the viewer is connected with a landmark moment representing years of work by thousands of individuals.

“You are brought to the surface of Mars. You’re sitting there, seven meters off the surface of the rover looking down,” he said. “It’s absolutely exhilarating, and it is evocative of those other images from our experience as human beings moving out into our solar system.”

The image was taken at the very end of the so-called “seven-minutes-of-terror” descent sequence that brought Perseverance from the top of Mars’ atmosphere, traveling at 12,000 miles per hour, to a gentle touchdown on the floor of avast basin called the Jezero Crater.

Next week, NASA hopes to present more photos and video — some possibly with audio — taken by all six cameras affixed tothe descending spacecraft, showing more of the sky crane maneuvers, as well as the supersonic parachute deployment that preceded it.

Pauline Hwang, strategic mission manager, said the rover itself “is doing great and is healthy on the surface of Mars, and continues to be highly functional and awesome.”

The vehicle landed about two kilometers from tall cliffs at the base of a ancient river delta carved into the corner of the crater billions of years ago, when Mars was warmer, wetter and presumably hospitable to life.

Scientists say the site is ideal for pursuing Perseverance’s primary objective — searching for fossilised traces of microbial life preserved in sediments believed to have been deposited around the delta and the long-vanished lake it once fed.

Samples of rock drilled from the Martian soil are to be stored on the surface for eventual retrieval and delivery to Earth by two future robotic missions to the Red Planet, as early as 2031.

Another color photo published on Friday, captured moments after the rover’s arrival, shows a rocky expanse of terrain around the landing site and what appear to be the delta cliffs in the distance.

The mission’s surface team will spend the coming days and weeks unfastening, unfurling and testing the vehicle’s robot arm, communication antennae and other equipment, aligning instruments and upgrading the rover’s software, Hwang said. She said it would be about nine “sols,” or Martian days,before the rover is ready for its first test spin.

One of Perseverance’s tasks before embarking on its search for signs of microbial life will be to deploy a miniature helicopter it carried to Mars for an unprecedented extraterrestrial test flight. But Hwang said that effort was still about two months away.

[ad_2]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE