Red Rover All Over

Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers observed the first driving test for NASA's Mars 2020 rover on Dec. 17, 2019. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Activities today included Japanese, Algebra and mowing the lawn. The highlight of today was a one-hour live workshop presented by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories. It presented an in-depth look at how the Perseverance Mars rover will explore the science of the Red Planet, building on our understanding of the planet and preparing for future human missions. 

Experts featured in the presentation included Systems engineer Christina (Diaz) Hernandez and education specialist Brandon Rodriguez.

To date, the surface of the Red Planet has been visited by eight NASA spacecraft. Perseverance, set to launch on July 20, will be the ninth. It's the first that is expected to gather Mars samples for future return to Earth. 

If all goes well, Perseverance will touch down at Jezero Crater.

Here's what CJ had to say about the show. 

Earlier today, NASA's JPL broadcast a short livestream about the Perseverance rover, set to be launched into space later this month. The livestream gave a cursory overview of Perseverance's features, and what we should expect from the rover once if it makes it to Mars' surface. 

One of the mechanical instruments highlighted the most during the livestream was named the "Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals," AKA SHERLOC (a backronym referencing fictional detective Sherlock Holmes). According to NASA's website, SHERLOC utilizes "spectrometers, a laser and a camera to search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life." Some NASA researchers even believe that microbial life may have existed on Mars over three billion years ago. Another tool used by Perseverance is appropriately named WATSON, another backronym, this time referencing Sherlock Holmes' fictional assistant John Watson. WATSON takes high-quality pictures, useful to NASA researchers back on Earth's surface.

And here's what Annabelle had to report. ...

NASA’s Perseverance rover has quite a few different tools and devices on it to help study the surface of Mars. The SHERLOC lens examines the particles in the ground for organic material, which is paired with the high quality WATSON camera to take pictures of what’s found. Another tool right next to these two on the rover’s arm is the PIXL lens, which can detect the elemental compositions of the soil. Mastcam-Z, located on the rover’s ‘head’ is sort of like the rover’s pair of eyes. They’re a set of 2 advanced cameras that can take both full-color panoramic pictures and smaller stereoscopic 3d images. 

In addition to these cameras, Perseverance has a few sensors that can get some very interesting readings from the soil in non-visual ways. The RIMFAX is an in-situ radar that can drill into the Martian surface and give us our first-ever look at the surface below! Most excitingly, MOXIE is an experimental tool on board that can superheat the air and potentially convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, meaning potential human astronauts would have a much easier time breathing on Mars!

You can watch a replay of the broadcast here ... 


Explore related education resources and events at https://go.nasa.gov/teachingspace