The site is at the outflow of one of the largest systems of ancient waterways on Mars, according to Jorge Vago, the project scientist at ESA for the ExoMars mission. One thing that makes Oxia Planum especially interesting to Vago is that the body of water may have been very large, even an ocean.
The past existence of a northern martian ocean still remains to be proven, but Vago thinks the ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin , could help make the case. The mission is about chemistry. The Rosalind Franklin rover will search for biosignatures, a term for a host of signs that life may have existed on Mars.
These signs include fossils of cells, mineral structures associated with organisms, chemicals found in living creatures, and molecules modified by biological processes. The surface of Mars is not a friendly place for organic molecules. Mars has little of either protection. That is why Rosalind Franklin will be looking elsewhere.
One of its key instruments is a drill capable of collecting samples from 2 m underground. Whether the drill can work as planned remains to be seen. But it has a different design. It got about 30 cm down before it stopped moving, possibly because it ran into a rock. Scientists and engineers are still trying to figure out what to do next. It was selected for its small size and ability to operate at ambient Mars pressure rather than under high vacuum. MOMA also carries reagents that can be added to samples to volatilize chiral molecules, small molecules like amino acids, and very large molecules intact.
One piece of evidence is chiral molecules. This is true for DNA and for amino acids. In addition to chirality, evidence could come in the form of molecular chain length. Goesmann points out that biology tends to add two carbons at a time when synthesizing compounds, so seeing a pattern of even- or odd-length molecules could be a biosignature.
MOMA is the last instrument in a chain of them that starts with the drill. This spectrometer collects data from a window a few millimeters wide on the side of the drill bit. Raulin says Raman spectra are a good place to look for organic molecules.
Vago is certain Rosalind Franklin will find organic molecules. He says the chances of finding something suggestive of life, though, is about Washington University in St. Those landers took soil samples in the hopes of finding microbes. Arvidson says enthusiasm for Mars exploration in the US fell off quickly when it became clear there was no evidence of biological activity in the soil.
The orbiting Mars Global Surveyor in the s sparked new interest in studying martian geology, and the next rovers, Spirit and Opportunity , were essentially doing robotic field geology. All these missions carried the analytical equipment on board to answer those questions on-site. She also points out that returned samples would continue to be available for decades on Earth, allowing new analysis as equipment improves or as new questions arise.
What comes next is still only a guess, but scientists are confident that NASA will fund a mission to retrieve those samples. One proposal, in collaboration with ESA, would send an additional lander to Mars, with a small rover to retrieve the cached samples and a rocket to propel them into Mars orbit.
There, the samples would be transferred to an orbiter that could return them to Earth. And if the return mission never happens, or it fails to bring the samples back? It uses electrolysis to split CO 2 into CO and oxygen ions. Hecht says a rocket capable of launching a crew and its equipment into orbit from Mars would need to be propelled by about 7 metric tons of methane and 27 metric tons of oxygen. Getting all that oxygen to Mars would require many launches, but if a machine like MOXIE was sent ahead of time, it could produce the required oxygen for a return trip over several years.
MOXIE is supposed to make about 10 g of oxygen per hour. The orbiter that will accompany HX-1 to Mars carries a methane-sensing instrument as well. Methane can be a product of biological activity and has been detected on Mars before, although its source remains a mystery. The CNSA has said it is planning to launch the rover next year, but media outlets have reported some problems with the heavy-lift rocket it intends to use for launch. If China is successful, it will be just the fourth nation to reach Mars.
And if the US, Europe, and China are successful, it will be the first time three rovers will operate on the Red Planet simultaneously, let alone three rovers from different nations. Their success will also give scientists brand-new information about the planet.
But I can imagine the scientific conferences that would come from having three rovers in three different parts of the world. This story was corrected on Feb. Raymond E. Arvidson is a geologist at Washington University in St. Here's what it will do:. The moment was a culmination of years of preparation for NASA scientists across the country. Retired NASA astronaut Ron Garan said the Perseverance rover landing on Mars is significant because "these are the baby steps of exploring our whole solar system.
Whatever the case is, a better understanding of how planetary science works, how planets function, and the life cycle of planets is going to help us here on Earth immensely. And it's also going to help us understand our place in the universe," he said. Garan said the rover looking into why there isn't life on Mars now is just as important as looking for signs of life. I mean, that would be amazing in itself.
But to me, the other part of that is, we'd want to know why there's not life there now. We would want to know why a planet that used to have water and used to potentially be able to support life no longer does. And that has incredible implications for our own climate study here on Earth," Garan said. It is the first of many the rover will send while it's on its mission on the planet. Here's what the account tweeted shortly after landing:.
The Perseverance rover just became NASA's fifth rover to safely land on the surface of Mars after surviving the "seven minutes of terror. The announcement marks the end of the record-smashing Mars Exploration Rovers mission , which built and operated Opportunity and its sibling rover, Spirit. The two rovers were each designed to go less than a mile and last 90 to a hundred Martian days, or sols.
But the pair surpassed every conceivable expectation. After landing on January 4, , Spirit drove hard through rugged terrain until it got stuck in and went silent in Meanwhile, Opportunity went farther for longer than any other vehicle on another world—and all other Mars rovers combined. And I look forward to congratulating the team that puts Opportunity into second place. The other is Mars just finally reaches out and kills them. To have Opportunity go for and-a-half years and then get taken out by one of the most ferocious Mars dust storms in decades—if that's the way it plays out, we can walk away with our heads held high.
Opportunity's path to Mars was as uneven as the red planet's rolling hills. The mission's core team spent more than a decade writing unsuccessful proposals to NASA, until the agency finally approved a two-rover mission by early But elation soon gave way to panic: The team had hoped for at least 48 months to build the two rovers, but they would get only And as the team raced against this deadline, engineers were also trying to reinvent how rovers are built in the first place.
The rovers' most direct ancestor, the Pathfinder mission, consisted of a lander and separate rover. Here, JPL was trying to pack all the features of a lander into a rover, with far greater autonomy than Pathfinder ever had. Teams led by project manager Peter Theisinger huddled to figure out how to pull off the build.
JPL deputy project manager Jennifer Trosper , brought on to lead the systems engineering, recalls the effort as an all-hands-on-deck experience. Hardware and software were being tested in three eight-hour shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even then, engineers were sending final software updates to the rovers while they were in space and en route to Mars.
The updates didn't stop once the rovers arrived on Mars. Eighteen sols after Spirit landed, Trosper's team suddenly lost contact with the rover. The days-long silence was made all the worse by the knowledge that whatever crippled Spirit may well claim Opportunity, which still was en route to Mars. But the team isolated the bug and fixed it, pushing an update to Opportunity on the fly. When Opportunity landed on January 25, , it touched down without a hitch. Originally, the team thought both rovers would last no more than 90 sols, based on expected dust accumulation on the rovers' solar panels.
But the scientists hadn't accounted for winds on Mars to be strong enough to clean off the panels. Unexpectedly renewed with each changing season, the rovers did more work than anyone thought possible, and they now leave behind a towering scientific legacy.
But Spirit and Opportunity were the first to uncover definitive evidence that liquid water once existed on Mars for appreciable periods of time. Along the way, the rovers also revealed the red planet to be more complex and varied than scientists originally thought. The rover's landing site provided scientists with compelling evidence that liquid water had been present beneath the surface and long ago flowed across the surface of Mars.
That said, the water at Opportunity's first stop would have been more like a bottle of sulfuric acid than a placid lake or pond. For the rover's first decade or so on Mars, studying the remains of this primordial acid bath was all in a day's work.
Along the way, Opportunity ducked into craters, examined the impact site of its own heat shield, and discovered intact meteorites on the red planet's surface.
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