Protecting a Mars Rover against the extremes of space travel is critical to the success of any mission. At Lockheed Martin, we’ve built aeroshells to protect all 10 of NASA’s Mars-bound landers and rovers.
For NASA’s latest mission — Mars 2020, which includes the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter — we built the protective aeroshell and helicopter delivery system. Mars 2020 will attempt the most challenging entry, descent and landing (EDL) sequences ever at Mars. The rover will touch down in the treacherous Jezero Crater, a region filled with boulders, rocky cliffs and shifting sand dunes.
On Tuesday, February 2, Starship serial number 9 (SN9) completed SpaceX’s second high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from our site in Cameron County, Texas.
Similar to the high-altitude flight test of Starship serial number 8 (SN8), SN9 was powered through ascent by three Raptor engines, each shutting down in sequence prior to the vehicle reaching apogee – approximately 10 kilometers in altitude. SN9 successfully performed a propellant transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant, before reorienting itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent.
The Starship prototype descended under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps are actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location. During the landing flip maneuver, one of the Raptor engines did not relight and caused SN9 to land at high speed and experience a RUD.
These test flights are all about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.
On December 9, 2020, Starship serial number 8 (SN8) completed a high-altitude flight test as it successfully ascended, transitioned propellant, and demonstrated a first-of-its-kind controlled aerodynamic descent and landing flip maneuver – which will enable landing where prepared surfaces or runways do not exist, including the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program that includes the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone. It was launched on 30 July 2020 at 11:50 UTC, and will touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on 18 February 2021.
Perseverance will investigate an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. The Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA on 4 December 2012 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The Perseverance rover’s design is derived from the Curiosity rover, and will use many components already fabricated and tested, new scientific instruments and a core drill.
Mars 2020 was the third of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of the United Arab Emirates (Hope orbiter) and China (Tianwen-1, with an orbiter, lander, and rover). All three are expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021.
Mars’ nightside atmosphere glows and pulsates in this data animation from MAVEN spacecraft observations. Green-to-white false color shows the enhanced brightenings on Mars’ ultraviolet “nightglow” measured by MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context, with ice caps visible at the poles. Three nightglow brightenings occur over one Mars rotation, the first much brighter than the other two. All three brightenings occur shortly after sunset, appearing on the left of this view of the night side of the planet. The pulsations are caused by downwards winds which enhance the chemical reaction creating nitric oxide which causes the glow. Months of data were averaged to identify these patterns, indicating they repeat nightly.
Video credit: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP
Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a Mars rover manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for use in NASA’s Mars 2020 mission.
The Perseverance rover was designed with help from the Curiosity’s engineering team, and they are similar to each other. Engineers redesigned the Perseverance rover wheels to be more robust than Curiosity’s wheels, which have sustained some damage. The rover has thicker, more durable aluminum wheels, with reduced width and a greater diameter (52.5 centimetres (20.7 in)) than Curiosity’s 50-centimetre (20 in) wheels. The aluminum wheels are covered with cleats for traction and curved titanium spokes for springy support. The combination of the larger instrument suite, new Sampling and Caching System, and modified wheels makes Perseverance heavier than its predecessor, Curiosity, by 17% (899 kg to 1050 kg). The rover will include a five-jointed robotic arm measuring 2.1 metres (6 ft 11 in) long. The arm will be used in combination with a turret to analyze geologic samples from the Martian surface.
The rover’s power generator (MMRTG) has a mass of 45 kilograms (99 lb) and uses 4.8 kilograms (10.6 lb) of plutonium dioxide as the source of steady supply of heat that is converted to electricity. The electrical power generated is approximately 110 watts at launch with little decrease over the mission time. Two lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are included to meet peak demands of rover activities when the demand temporarily exceeds the MMRTG’s steady electrical output levels. The MMRTG offers a 14-year operational lifetime, and it was provided to NASA by the US Department of Energy. Unlike solar panels, the MMRTG provides engineers with significant flexibility in operating the rover’s instruments even at night and during dust storms, and through the winter season.
The rover’s computer uses the BAE RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer. The computer contains 128 Megabytes of volatile DRAM, and is run at 133 MHz. The flight software is able to access 4 gigabytes of NAND non-volatile memory on a separate card.
Also travelling with Perseverance as a part of Mars 2020 is the Mars helicopter experiment, named Ingenuity. A solar-powered helicopter drone with a mass of 1.8 kilograms (4.0 lb), it will be tested for flight stability and for its potential to scout the best driving route for the rover over a planned 30-day period. Other than cameras, it carries no scientific instruments.
Subscribe to blog posts using RSS
