Endure’Seven Minutes of Fear’ and touch down “Hello World”… Total mobilization of advanced technology

(San Francisco = Yonhap News) Correspondent Seong-ho Jeong = “Check the touchdown! Perseverance has safely arrived on the surface of Mars and is ready to begin searching for traces of life in the past!”

Swati Mohan, director of guidance, navigation, and control at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Research Institute (JPL), said this when it was confirmed that the video exploration rover’Purservance’ was settled on Mars at 5:58 am KST on the 19th. Hit.

According to CBS, although social distancing was taken, the flight engineers at the institute cheered and clapped as their worries turned to relief when the landing was confirmed.

The landing of Perseverance was evaluated as’the most difficult landing attempted on Mars’. That’s why NASA scientists call this landing ‘7 minutes of terror’.

This is because, during the process of entering the atmosphere, the friction with the atmosphere had to endure the high temperature equivalent to the sun’s surface and a braking force that is 10 times the Earth’s gravity, and yet reach the target landing point accurately.

Perseverance entered the atmosphere of Mars on this day at a speed of 12,000 miles per hour (about 19,300 km per hour), but to land safely, it had to slow down to zero within 7 minutes. This entry speed is more than 20 times the average cruising speed of a passenger plane, 925 km/h.

Also, for this reason, the protective thermal armor plate of Perservance is designed to withstand about 1299 degrees, which is the level of melting steel, and it is 70 feet in diameter (about 21 m) to be used after slowing down to less than 1,000 miles per hour (about 1,600 km). ) Was also equipped with a parachute.

After one minute of landing, the parachute was removed, and eight reverse-propelled rocket engines were ignited.

In addition, steep cliffs, sand dunes, large rocks, and crash craters scattered at the landing site all had to be avoided. A next-generation guidance system equipped with multiple cameras, radars, and sensors was used here.

In particular, all of this had to be done by Perseverance himself. Because the radio signal from this rover took over 11 minutes to reach Earth, it was impossible for Earth’s control station to control or assist the landing process in 7 minutes.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that EDL is the most important and dangerous part of this mission,” said Alan Chen, who commanded the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) of the Perseverance. “It’s the largest and heaviest we’ve ever made. “We landed the most complicated rover at the most dangerous spot we’ve ever tried.”

After safely landing on Mars that day, Perseverance uploaded an image around the landing site, which was captured for the first time, with a tweet beginning with “Hello, world”. This phrase is a widely used expression as the first example phrase that people learning programming languages ​​create.

Perseverance will remain on Mars for years to come and will be tasked with searching for traces of microbes in the planet’s ancient lakes that existed 3.9 billion years ago.

An example is to collect rocks and soil from an ancient delta presumed area called’Jezero Crater’ to see if any microbial fossils remain there. This is because water has long disappeared, but these traces may remain on the riverbed of the lake.

CBS reported that Perseverance will take on a future mission as “Mars robotic geologist.” Various samples of Mars collected in this way will be sent to Earth in the 2030s.

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2021/02/19 09:14 sent