Mission successful: the Mars rover “Perseverance” has landed on the red planet with the ultra-light helicopter “Ingenuity” - and is sending its first images.
Update from February 20th, 6.43pm
: The mini helicopter “Ingenuity” (in German: ingenuity) is attached to the underside of “Perseverance” (stamina).
On Friday he radioed his first status report to the control center in Pasadena, California.
"Everything seems to be working fine," said project leader Tim Canham, according to NASA.
In 30 to 60 days, the helicopter should explore Mars from a bird's eye view.
It would be the first flight of an aircraft over another planet.
In doing so, “Ingenuity” will have to withstand extreme conditions: On Mars, it can be as cold as minus 90 degrees Celsius at night.
Therefore: Now it is important to quickly charge the six lithium-ion batteries of the aircraft, which weighs around two kilograms, in order to keep the electronics warm, says Canham.
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One of the six wheels of the Mars rover “Perseverance” on Mars
© Nasa / Jpl-Caltech / PA Media / dpa
"Mars 2020" - NASA mission: "Perseverance" sends first photos from Mars - template for celebrity memes
Update from February 19, 5:05 p.m
.: Shortly after NASA received the first images of Mars
(see update from February 18, 10:01 p.m)
, the first memes were already there.
A few examples: Twitter users “shot” politicians and celebrities on the red planet - for example Bernie Sanders, who had his very own meme after the inauguration of Joe Biden *.
Go MARS Rover.
pic.twitter.com/k02SpkKmaH
- Colonel Kim Olson (@KimOlsonTx) February 19, 2021
The template for this was the first picture posted by NASA itself, a black and white photo of the planet's surface.
The picture shows a section of the "Jezero Crater" as well as the shadow of the robot in the dry lake that has never been examined on site.
Incidentally, the Republican US Senator Ted Cruz, who flew on vacation to the Mexican Caribbean coast in the middle of the winter weather crisis in his home state of Texas, also got his fat off.
A photomontage shows Cruz pulling his trolley case across the floor of the “Jezero Crater” on Mars.
Mars rover "Perseverance" follows "Curiosity" - and is thus already the fifth from NASA
Update from February 18, 10:21 p.m
.: “Perseverance” is already the fifth rover that NASA brings to Mars - most recently in 2012 “Curiosity”.
Overall, however, so far only less than half of all Mars missions launched worldwide have been successful.
In the past week, space probes first from the United Arab Emirates and then from China were successfully swung into orbit of the planet.
“Al-Amal”, the probe of the United Arab Emirates, is not supposed to land, the landing of the Chinese spaceship “Tianwen 1” is planned in two to three months.
Update from February 18, 10:01 p.m
.: NASA received the first images of Mars.
They come from a camera that is actually only responsible for the technical control, which is why the image quality is still manageable.
In total, the Mars rover is equipped with 19 cameras, so that more recordings will follow soon.
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The first picture that the NASA rover "Perseverance" sent from Mars towards Earth.
© NASA / AFP
Mars 2020 ”- NASA mission:“ Perseverance ”has landed
Update from February 18, 9:56 p.m
.: The Mars rover "Perseverance" has landed safely.
Loud cheers broke out within the NASA crew.
The robot, which was launched from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in July 2020, touched down in a dry lake called “Jezero Crater” that had never been examined on site.
Update from February 18,
9:55 p.m.: The abseiling maneuver begins 20 meters above the surface.
The rover will now be brought towards Mars.
Update from February 18, 9:53 p.m
.: The rover is braked by a parachute on its approach to landing.
This reduces its speed so that the landing should take place in a few moments.
Update from February 18, 9:52 p.m
.: “Perseverance” is currently on the approach, the speed is further reduced and the rover is 12 kilometers above the surface of Mars.
The rover seems to get the thermal load under control.
Update from February 18th, 9.49pm
: The NASA rover "Perseverance" has just entered the Martian atmosphere.
At the moment everything is going according to plan, but the riskiest phase is still ahead of the scientists, as temperatures rise to 1200 to 1300 degrees Celsius when the Martian atmosphere enters.
The Mars rover is then in the so-called "seven minutes of terror" - they decide on the success of the mission.
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The illustration shows the Nasa rover “Perseverance” landing on Mars.
© NASA / dpa
Nasa rover “Perseverance” on the way to Mars: Even mini helicopters on board - landing now live
First report: Washington - The landing of "Perseverance" is planned for Thursday (February 17) around 9:55 pm CET.
According to NASA scientist Ken Farley, the landing site is "spectacular".
The Jezero crater with a diameter of 45 kilometers is located in the northern hemisphere of Mars.
It has repeatedly been considered as a landing site for previous Mars missions, but discarded as too difficult.
Mars rover “Perseverance” about to land: an ambitious mission on the red planet
If the difficult landing maneuver succeeds, it is the start of an ambitious mission - a multi-year search for traces of past life on Mars.
The seven minutes of landing are crucial.
The spacecraft has to brake sharply so that the rover can then be set down safely on Mars using a parachute, among other things.
Nasa likes to refer to the seven minutes as the "seven minutes of terror".
Due to the signal travel time of around eleven minutes from Mars to Earth, the confirmation of the landing will arrive at NASA's control center in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, California) at 9:55 p.m. at the earliest, according to the German Aerospace Center (DLR) .
After landing, "Perseverance" should quickly send first photos of the crater surface and later video recordings.
Mars rover “Perseverance”: Largest vehicle that was ever brought to Mars
Due to the corona pandemic, fewer people will be sitting in the control room of the “Mars 2020” mission than usual.
"But when we have confirmation of the landing, I don't think Covid can stop us from jumping up and down and raising our fists," says Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace.
The Mars rover "Perseverance" (in German: "Endurance") is the largest vehicle that has ever been brought to Mars.
It weighs a ton, has a robotic arm around two meters long, 19 cameras and two microphones.
The approximately 2.5 billion dollar (about 2.2 billion euros) expensive Rover had been designed and built for around eight years.
For the first time, a small helicopter is on board and for the first time in the history of space travel, samples are to be brought back to Earth from Mars in a mission developed jointly with the European space agency Esa.
The rover reaches a speed of 152 meters per hour, making it faster than any of its predecessors on Mars.
If “Perseverance” lands intact, it would only be the fifth Mars rover that has successfully mastered the long journey from Earth.
All were built by the USA, the last one so far - "Curiosity" - is still in use.
In 1997 the "Sojourner" landed, which only communicated with the earth for around three months.
In 2004 the twin rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" followed.
Communication to "Spirit" was lost in 2007 in a huge dust storm, "Opportunity" succumbed to the same fate in 2018.
In 2012 “Curiosity” landed.
The robot became a crowd favorite.
His team provides scientists and fans with news and photos via social networks.
In 2018, the stationary NASA lander “InSight” made it to Mars, and several probes orbit the red planet.
Mars rover “Perseverance” has ultra-light helicopter “Ingenuity” on board
As part of the “Mars 2020” mission, the US space agency NASA plans to bring its Mars rover “Perseverance” together with the ultra-light helicopter “Ingenuity” to the red planet on Thursday.
There “Ingenuity” is supposed to fly through the Martian atmosphere.
This is a particular challenge because the Martian atmosphere is only one percent the density of the Earth's atmosphere.
"Ingenuity" is actually more like a drone.
Nasa engineers had to build the mini helicopter as light as possible so that it could take off in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere.
It weighs just 1.8 kilograms and consists of four feet, a missile and two propellers.
The propellers rotate 2400 times per minute, about five times faster than a normal helicopter.
"Ingenuity" is equipped with four solar panels to recharge its batteries.
A large part of the energy is required to warm up the aircraft again after night temperatures of minus 90 degrees.
During its flights, “Ingenuity” can take photos and videos of Mars.
On the journey to the Red Planet, the helicopter was transported in the belly of the Mars rover “Perseverance”.
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Mars helicopter "Ingenuity" fly through the Martian atmosphere.
© Patrick T. Fallon / afp
“Ingenuity”: 90-second flights on Mars
"Ingenuity" is expected to complete up to five flights over the surface of Mars.
The aircraft can ascend up to five meters and fly up to 300 meters.
However, a significantly shorter distance should be covered in the first test.
Each flight can take up to a minute and a half.
NASA emphasizes that this is not a little "compared to the twelve seconds" that the first motorized flight on earth took.
Since the transmission of data from Mars to Earth takes around 20 minutes, Ingenuity is not controlled remotely, but flies independently.
NASA only issues basic orders, and "Ingenuity" uses a series of sensors to orient itself.
The results of the flights will only be available some time later.
Nasa speaks of a demonstration mission in "Ingenuity".
It has no scientific goal other than to show that flying is possible on Mars.
In addition, NASA wants to collect data from an aircraft on another planet with the project.
"Mars 2020" mission: Landing on Mars in the livestream
The landing on the Red Planet accompanies the Planetarium Berlin Foundation and the Society of German-speaking Planetariums in a YouTube live stream.
From 9:50 p.m., experts provided information about Mars and previous projects and explained the current US mission.
A landing schedule can also be found on the DLR website.
(ml / dpa / afp)
List of rubric lists: © Nasa / Jpl-Caltech / PA Media / dpa