NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission & Perseverance Rover

This is Mars as viewed on NASA's awesome web-based portal, Mars Trek.
And this point here is the Jezero Crater, where NASA's Mars 2020 Mission will take place.
The launch window for the mission is between July 17th and August 5th of this year and centers around the Perseverance Rover.
The Perseverance is nearly identical to the Curiosity Rover except for redesigned wheels.
Reusing Curiosity’s design makes sense because Curiosity is an engineering marvel and saves NASA a lot of money in development costs.
Aside from the redesigned wheels, Perseverance also has a unique set of instruments needed for the mission.
The Mars 2020 Mission is just a part of NASA's overarching Mars Exploration Program.
The program has four key science Goals, in which the Perseverance will play a significant role in their achievement.
The first goal is to determine whether life ever existed on the planet, and this is why the Jezero Crater was chosen to be the site.
The crater may have contained a large 800-foot lake connected to rivers.
To help achieve this goal, the Perseverance is equipped with three amazing instruments.
- The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry or PIXL.
- The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals or SHERLOC.
- And the SuperCam.
PIXL is an X-ray Spectrometer, which allows Perseverance to detect signs of biofilm made by microbes that may have lived on the planet long ago when the climate was warmer.
At just 10 lbs, it is 50 times lighter than the typical lab spectrometer used for the same purpose.
SHERLOC also has a spectrometer, but it uses an ultraviolet laser to determine the chemical makeup of surfaces.
Last but not least is the SuperCam, which examines rocks and soils with a camera, laser, and spectrometers to seek organic compounds.
It can identify the chemical and mineral makeup of targets as small as a pencil point from a distance of more than 7 meters!
The second goal is to characterize the climate of Mars.
The rover will perform astrobiological investigations using the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer or MEDA.
MEDA will continuously measure the characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, including the direction and wind speed, temperature, and humidity, and also measures the amount and size of dust particles.
Dust storms can block out the sun for weeks every seven to 10 years, there are enormous dust storms that cover the entire planet.
And the data collected from MEDA will help predict weather conditions that the first astronauts will face and the eventual colonists.
The third goal is to Characterize the Geology of Mars by studying the rock record.
It will do this using the Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment or RIMFAX.
RIMFAX uses radar waves to uncover what lies beneath the Martian surface, capable of detecting ice or salty brines.
Additionally, the rover will use its percussive coring drill to collect rock samples and place them in sealed tubes.
The samples will eventually be placed on the planet's surface and possibly be collected on a future mars mission to be returned to Earth for further study.
Learning the Geology of Mars is foundational knowledge that is important for future colonists.
Lastly, the fourth goal of the Mars 2020 mission is to Prepare for Human Exploration.
The Perseverance has four sub-objectives for this goal, but we are going to zero in on the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE.
MOXIE is an experiment that aims to demonstrate the ability to produce oxygen from the Martian Atmosphere.
This is critical for two apparent reasons as astronauts and colonists need oxygen to breathe and it can be used as propellant for return trips back to Earth.
The MOXIE takes the Mars atmosphere and heats it up to 800 degrees Celsius, which allows the oxygen to be separated from the Carbon dioxide.
If this experiment is successful, NASA may send a dedicated mission to produce Oxygen on Mars, which would lay the groundwork for human missions and a colony.
So, all the instruments on the Perseverance are astonishing in their own right but to top it off, the rover is equipped with a helicopter.
If successful, the idea is for future Mars rover missions to be outfitted with drones that can scan the surrounding area for interesting objects and places for the rover to explore.
NASA has a long succession of successful Mars rover missions going back 23 years.
Hopefully, the Perseverance continues the succession of successful Mars rovers.
And hopefully, through its discoveries and experiments, it paves the way for the human missions to come.