WINNIPEG – The quest to discover if life ever existed on Mars is marking a major milestone.
The Mars Perseverance rover is set to touch down on the red planet sometime in the next 24 hours and could help finally answer a burning question: has there ever been life on Mars before?
According to NASA, the mission entails the rover touching down successfully to search for ancient microbial life on the planet.
The landing site is a 3.5 billion-year-old crater specifically selected by scientists because it once was an ancient lake.
“And there is a river that is running into it you can see the ancient channel running into it and where the river meets the lake there is a delta that formed so sediment-water and on Earth, that type of environment is actually teeming with life,” explained Dr. Cassandra Marion with the Science Advisory Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
Marion says the hope is to find evidence of microbial fossils and organic compounds in the extremely old sediment.
The rover will also collect samples for a future return to Earth and help pave the way for further human exploration.
Onboard the rover is also a helicopter that will attempt the first powered flight on another planet and a device that will test our ability to create oxygen from Mars’ carbon-dioxide-filled atmosphere.
“And we need oxygen for two main reasons. First, for the astronauts to breathe so, life support, and the second is rocket fuel. Oxygen is one of the main components in rocket fuel so if we want to get our astronauts back we’re going to need a lot of oxygen,” said Marion.
The NASA-led mission has been assisted by Canadians along the way.
Congratulations to French Canadian aerospace engineer @FarahAlibay, who will be remotely piloting @NASAPersevere on Mars tomorrow. ???? All Canadians & Québécois are proud of you. https://t.co/oPY6RnTyAc
— Harjit Sajjan (@HarjitSajjan) February 17, 2021
Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan tweeted his support for Canadian aerospace engineer Farah Alibay, who will be remotely piloting the lander on Friday.
Alibay spoke with CityNews about the experience shortly after the rover was launched in July.
Dr. Raymond Francis trained the mission science team on how to use the new rover and explore the planet.
“You know NASA is doing projects like this that are of global significance to the scientific community and they go find the best experts they can,” said Francis, a science operations engineer who was born in Sudbury, Ont., and now works out of NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory.
After touchdown, Francis will help operate the rovers’ onboard laser systems.
“So, we fire a powerful laser at usually a rock and we vaporize it, turn it into plasma,” he said. “And then using a spectrometer that looks through the same telescope that focused the laser we can look at the glowing plasma and it emits characteristic wavelengths of light that tell us what the rock was made of.”
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is the third space probe to arrive at Mars in a little over a week. The United Arab Emirates and China also have space probs in Mars orbit.
Perseverance is expected to touch down on Thursday.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiemh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LjY2MGNpdHluZXdzLmNvbS8yMDIxLzAyLzE3L3BlcnNldmVyYW5jZS1yb3Zlci1sYW5kaW5nLXRoaXMtd2Vlay13aWxsLWRldGVybWluZS1pZi10aGVyZS13YXMtZXZlci1saWZlLW9uLW1hcnMv0gF-aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuNjYwY2l0eW5ld3MuY29tLzIwMjEvMDIvMTcvcGVyc2V2ZXJhbmNlLXJvdmVyLWxhbmRpbmctdGhpcy13ZWVrLXdpbGwtZGV0ZXJtaW5lLWlmLXRoZXJlLXdhcy1ldmVyLWxpZmUtb24tbWFycy9hbXAv?oc=5
2021-02-17 21:27:45Z
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