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SUPPORTMars is hard. The global success rate of missions to the Red Planet is just 48%, yet NASA has a seemingly impossible 88% success rate when it comes to landing rovers or science platforms on our neighboring world. Only one NASA Mars landing attempt out of nine has failed.
The U.S. space agency will seek to continue that track record with the Perseverance rover.
The most notable element of the mission is that it is the first expedition to Mars in which a robotic emissary will be primarily tasked with seeking out evidence of past life.
The mission will also carry the first helicopter to fly on another world in our solar system. The copter, named Ingenuity, will largely test helicopter technology that will be needed for the upcoming mission to Titan while also scouting locations for Perseverance to focus its investigation..
Ingenuity is built to last at least 30 days and will be used early on in Perseverance’s mission.
After liftoff from Cape Canaveral, it will take the rover and helicopter seven months to reach Mars.
Perseverance will use the same “Seven Minutes of Terror" entry and landing profile that its cousin rover, Curiosity, used when it arrived on Mars in August 2012.
Those critical minutes will begin when Perseverance slams into the Martian atmosphere at 5.9 km per second. During this phase, temperatures outside the protective heat shield will climb to 2,100° C.
A hypersonic parachute will then deploy to slow the rover before Perseverance drops out of the bottom of its protective shell and free-falls toward the Martian surface for a few seconds.
A retrorocket landing pack mounted to the back of Perseverance will then fire to bring the rover to what is basically a stable hover 7.5 meters above Mars’ surface.
From here, a skycrane winch will lower Perseverance to the surface before the retrorocket pack flies off for a crash landing a safe distance away.
Perseverance will then call home, telling its controllers it survived landing and is ready for checkouts.
The mission is designed to last at least two Earth years but carries enough propellant to continue for over a decade if its science instruments continue to function properly.
Given proposed SpaceX timelines for human Mars exploration, Perseverance will be the first Mars rover launched with the possibility of having humans visit it on the Red Planet within its operational lifetime.
Atlas V: the workhorse of United Launch Alliance's rocket fleet.
The rocket is a mix of Russian and American technology, using the Russian RD-180 as the rocket's first stage engine, and is one of the most versatile rockets in the world with 20 possible configurations -- though only 10 have flown.
Stats
Height: 58.3 m (191 ft) with payload fairing, 52.4 m (172 ft) with Starliner.
Diameter: 3.81 m (12.5 ft)
Mass: 590,000 kg (1,300,000 lb)
Stages: 2 (3 with Star 48 upper stage)
Developed in the mid-to-late-1990s, it is the fifth and last major version of the veteran Atlas rocket, which began flying in 1957.
Lockheed Martin designed and built Atlas V as part of the U.S. government's 1994 initiative to create an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program for national security missions.
The two companies with EELV rockets -- Lockheed Martin with Atlas V and Boeing with Delta IV -- merged in 2006, creating an effective U.S. market monopoly with United Launch Alliance (ULA).
For years, the U.S. government paid ULA over $800 million annually -- not for rockets or launches but for ULA to maintain their facilities to be ready to launch EELV missions.
Therefore, pricing of the Atlas V has varied greatly over the years, with a basic Atlas V 401 (no boosters and a single-engine second stage) costing anywhere from the high-$90 millions to $163 million USD in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Sweeping price and cost-per-launch figure reductions have occurred since SpaceX began directly competing against ULA in the 2010s.
The Atlas V’s 541 variant costs a minimum of $145 million USD.
While not the cheapest rocket on the market, the Atlas V's safety and success are unparalleled -- with a 100% mission success rating.
Atlas V 541
This mission will use the Atlas V 541 variant - with a five-meter payload fairing (5), four side-mounted solid rocket boosters (4), and a single engine Centaur upper stage (1).
Of its flights to date, the Atlas V 541's most prominent flights have included NASA's Curiosity Rover on November 26th, 2011, The Mars Perseverence Rover on July 30th, 2020 as well as multiple NRO and GOES satellite launches.
Image: ULA
Space Launch Complex-41 is the east-coast home of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket.
The pad hosted its first launch on December 21st, 1965 and is currently being upgraded to serve ULA's Vulcan rocket no earlier than 2022.
Vulcan and Atlas V will share the pad for several years before the Atlas is retired.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, SLC-41 was used for the U.S. Air Force’s Titan III and Titan IV rockets.
It has been the launch site of many notable missions:
The pad will soon start launching humans on Boeing's Starliner capsule beginning no earlier than 2024.
Located on Florida’s east coast, Cape Canaveral is ideally located to allow access to a wide variety of space destinations that can be reached while safely launching over the open Atlantic Ocean so as not to endanger anyone on the ground.
The Cape currently supports the launch of four different rocket families: Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, and Minotaur.
Launches of Vulcan from ULA and New Glenn from Blue Origin are set to begin no earlier than 2024 with current schedules.
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, which occupies neighboring Merritt Island, and Cape Canaveral are often confused with each other or referred to as a single place.
They are in fact separate government installations but united as a single “Eastern Range” for launch operations.
Over its history, the spaceport has held the following names:
Credit: ULA
Jezero crater is a 49 km wide impact point on Mars that once held an ancient lake.
Its name, Jezero, is a Slavic language word for "lake."
The crater was selected as Perseverance's landing site in November 2018.
A podcast exploring the amazing milestones that changed space history, the wildest ideas that drive our future, and every development in this new Golden Age of Space.
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