Red Rover Redux

PERSEVERANCE: Today I did my thing, working in my bedroom from 8-5 trying to help Washingtonians seeking unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, Christian was in the basement, doing his work at home so Seattlites can have water. 

The kids worked on Japanese and Annabelle had a writing class. Come 1 p.m., they were both tuned in to a broadcast from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory all about the next Mars rover, Perseverance. 

Here's what Annabelle had to say about that. ...

NASA’s Perseverance rover is best described as a “little sibling” to Curiosity. It follows the same basic shape and looks remarkably similar, but it’s had many small tweaks and additions to make it more efficient and give it some unique new features. For example, the shape of the treads has been made a more wavy design so that there will be less sharp edges for rocks and other small debris to get trapped in as it moves. An extra piece of technology that has been added to the rover is a small helicopter drone that will be the first test of powered flight on Mars.

During the NASA channel livestream this morning, multiple engineers from the team spoke a bit about how this project differs from the Curiosity rover and gave viewers some links to sites where you can find resources to learn more about the space program and NASA at home. One of the sites is jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach , which is for teachers and parents that want to teach their kids structured lessons. The other site, go.nasa.gov/learningspace has more self-contained projects that students can work on on their own, meaning they’re much easier for those that are unable to attend a physical classroom during these times. 

And here are CJ's takeaways from the hour ...

Earlier today, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hosted a brief livestream about the upcoming Perseverance rover, which will accompany its older sibling Curiosity in exploring Mars' surface. The livestream mostly featured a NASA scientist (unfortunately, I could not find the archived livestream, and her name escapes me) providing a short description of the Perseverance rover's features and goals.

The two features of the Perseverance rover that were emphasized the most were its embedded flying "drone" (not sure if that's the right term), and its sample-collecting features. The "drone" embedded in the rover could potentially fly out, to get higher-altitude pictures of Mars' surface, and record details about Mars' higher atmosphere. The Perseverance rover will have the ability to collect several samples of material from the red planet, which, unfortunately, can't be analyzed right away. However, later down the line, NASA could send another mission to Mars, which could potentially attain and even bring the samples to Earth. This would allow NASA scientists to gain an unprecedented level of knowledge about Mars' composition.

Here is a replay of the broadcast they watched if you want to check it out: