NASA's Ingenuity helicopter flew on Mars for 102.4 minutes throughout 57 flights. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
NASA's Ingenuity has achieved a remarkable feat, surpassing all expectations. It embarked on a flight lasting more than two minutes, and so far, the helicopter flew for over a hundred minutes on Mars. Ingenuity's mission involves gathering data on short-distance flights and helping the Perseverance rover chart a course across the Martian planet.
Overall, the chopper flew a distance of 13,130 meters throughout 57 flights, all of which took 102.4 minutes to complete. Meanwhile, the rover has been tasked with extracting soil from the Jezero crater on Mars.
"Anniversaries are a time of reflection and celebration, and the Perseverance team is doing a lot of both," Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley said. "Perseverance has inspected and performed data collection on hundreds of intriguing geologic features, collected 15 rock cores, and created the first sample depot on another world. With the start of the next science campaign, known as 'Upper Fan,' on Feb. 15, we expect to be adding to that tally very soon."
In 2028, a lander is expected to launch to Mars, collecting those soil samples and bringing them to Earth, arriving in 2033. "The samples Perseverance has been collecting will provide a key chronology for the formation of Jezero Crater," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said. "Each one is carefully considered for its scientific value."
"Right now, we take what we know about the age of impact craters on the Moon and extrapolate that to Mars," added Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Bringing back a sample from this heavily cratered surface in Jezero could provide a tie-point to calibrate the Mars crater dating system independently, instead of relying solely on the lunar one."
The little golden MOXIE cube completed its mission on Mars and generated over 100 grams of oxygen on Mars. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Back in February 2021, the Perseverance rover landed on Mars along with MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), an oxygen-generating golden cube. MOXIE's last oxygen-generating event occurred on Aug. 7, producing 9.8 grams. Now that MOXIE has completed its mission, the device produced 122 grams of oxygen in total, double the amount the team expected from MOXIE.
The device created 12 grams per hour in its most efficient stage, and the oxygen is 98% pure, which could eventually allow NASA to up-scale the device for future human-exploration Mars missions. The team plans to develop a full-scale device with a MOXIE box capable of storing and liquefying all the produced oxygen. "When the first astronauts land on Mars, they may have the descendants of a microwave-oven-size device to thank for the air they breathe and the rocket propellant that gets them home," NASA wrote.
MOXIE extracts carbon dioxide molecules from Mars' atmosphere, composed of two oxygen atoms and one carbon atom, and removes the oxygen elements. This is tricky to achieve because the temperature must reach 1,470 °F. However, that process is carried out in different conditions on Mars throughout the year. Luckily, MOXIE can handle that thanks to its heat-tolerant materials, like a lightweight aerogel, nickel alloy parts, and a gold coating that reflects infrared heat, keeping the rover protected.
"We have to make decisions about which things need to be validated on Mars," the instrument's principal investigator, Michael Hecht of MIT, said. "I think there are many technologies on that list; I'm very pleased MOXIE was first."
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