Perseverance: The Complete Mission in Real-Time 3D
February 18, 2021
Experience the Perseverance mission of February 18, 2021: follow the spacecraft's real journey from Earth to Mars, down to the Jezero Crater landing, in a real-time 3D reconstruction.
It is July 30, 2020.
At Cape Canaveral, Florida, an Atlas V is about to leave for Mars again.
It carries Perseverance, a one-tonne rover, and a 1.8-kilo helicopter.
Its mission: to look for traces of ancient life on Mars.
Total cost of the mission: 2.7 billion dollars.
Mars only comes within reach every 26 months. The 2020 window closes in two weeks.
Liftoff. 530 tonnes tear off the pad, nine years after Curiosity.
All of it for 3.6 tonnes: the rover, its capsule and the stage that will fly it to Mars.
The four solid boosters are empty: they drop away at 48 kilometres.
The fairing opens on the capsule that will shield the rover all the way down.
The first stage drops away. The Centaur stage lights for seven minutes.
Engine off: in orbit at 28,000 km/h, it will coast for thirty-three minutes.
You do not aim at Mars, but at where Mars will be in seven months.
Earth already runs at 107,000 km/h around the Sun, and the spacecraft with it.
To reach the orbit of Mars, you only have to add 14,000 km/h.
The stage waits to reach the right point of its orbit before relighting.
The Centaur relights for eight minutes: this is the departure for Mars.
Engine off at 41,000 km/h: Earth can no longer hold it back.
Perseverance parts from the Centaur and carries on alone.
Mars is still only a small red disc, 185,000 kilometres away.
Like Curiosity, it draws its power from the heat of a block of plutonium.
On board, an experiment will make oxygen out of the Martian air.
Under its belly rides Ingenuity, to attempt the first flight on Mars.
It carries 43 tubes: it will drill rock cores for a future return to Earth.
Its target: Jezero, a 45-kilometre crater that once held a lake.
A river ran into it and built a delta: the best place there is to look.
Mars pulls it in: it is falling towards it at 10,000 km/h, and speeding up.
A radio signal takes 11 minutes from here to reach Earth.
When Earth learns it has entered, it will all be over, seven minutes ago.
The cruise stage is cast off. Only the capsule and its heat shield remain.
Entry into the atmosphere at 19,000 km/h. Seven minutes left to stop.
Ahead of the shield, the compressed air turns into a 1,300-degree plasma.
The capsule steers itself, aiming at an ellipse 7 kilometres by 6.
Parachute! It opens at 1,550 km/h, fired on distance rather than on speed.
Shield gone, a camera matches the ground to an onboard map and picks a spot.
The rover and its descent stage drop the capsule and light eight engines.
Like Curiosity, the rover is lowered on the end of three cables.
Contact, 18 February 2021, at Octavia E. Butler Landing.
Two months later Ingenuity lifts off: the first powered flight on another world.
On board, MOXIE made oxygen out of the carbon dioxide of Mars.
In 2024, a rock of the delta shows spots that intrigue the biologists.
It is still driving, climbing the rim of the crater, its tubes on board.