Perseverance: a year of discoveries and prowess on Mars with Ingenuity

Perseverance and Ingenuity are celebrating their first (earth) year on Mars! Both devices landed on Martian soil February 18, 2021, before embarking on an exploration of the arid soils of the Red Planet, in search of traces of past life on its surface. Around the mission called “Mars 2020” estimated at 2.7 billion dollars, the expectation was then great. The operation, led by the Nasa and more particularly the antenna of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), then took its share of novelties, in particular the small drone Ingenuity, first “ helicopter to fly over the plains of Mars. Since then, almost 365 days have passed on Earth, and the two robots have amazed amateurs and professionals around the world.

A new era of space exploration

Perseverance’s landing takes place on February 18, and if the maneuver proves perilous, it goes perfectly. The rover has just joined Curiosity, NASA’s other rover, which arrived on the Red Planet in 2012. The first image is transmitted to JPL engineers immediately. Perseverance is in the area it will travel and study for the rest of its mission: the Jezero Crater, which planetary scientists believe was a lake when water existed on the surface of Mars 3 billion years ago. of years.

Perseverance will not perform its first laps until a few weeks later, on March 4, when the American space agency and engineers from JPL and Irap (Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology, based in Toulouse) are calibrating and test the different instruments. Researchers operate the rover’s microphones, installed at the SuperCam, and for the first time, a recording allows the general public to listen to the sounds of Mars.

The Ingenuity drone, stored under the rover’s chassis, is deployed by Perseverance about a hundred meters from the landing site. The role of Ingenuity is to test the flight capabilities of a aircraft on Mars, whoseatmosphere tenuous requires greater effort to lift the 1.9 mass kg of the device. The first test flight takes place on April 19, 2021. For a few seconds, Ingenuity will rise to perform a hover : a historic first and a scientific success for the teams.

In search of water… And life

From 1^er June is the beginning of a real journey for Perseverance and Ingenuity. The rover leaves the landing site to explore several sectors of the Jezero Crater to carry out drilling operations. The objective is similar to that of Curiosity and the chinese rover zhurongarrived on Mars on May 14, 2021, namely to find hypothetical traces of salts minerals and organic matter. This research could provide tangible proof that microbial life could have developed on the Red Planet when water was present on its surface.

The first drilling taking place on August 7 is a failure, inflicting a first disappointment on NASA, which will try again a little less than a month later. On September 2, the space agency announced the success of the second attempt rock sampling. At the same time, Ingenuity continues to play the role of scout for the rover, accumulating successful flights, a real achievement to date. The samples confirm that Perseverance is indeed in an ancient lake, as indicated by NASA in a press release on October 8. By the end of October, Ingenuity had completed its 14^and flight.

The epic of Perseverance has sometimes experienced a few slowdowns, such as in January 2022, when the rover saw its robotic arm blocked for several days due to some rocks interfering with the mechanism. But the engineers have since overcome this problem and the two robots have resumed their journey to explore new regions and learn more about the history of Mars and its habitability.