NASA’s Perseverance rover will celebrate its two-year anniversary on the surface of Mars on Saturday, February 18. Since arriving at Jezero Crater in 2021, this six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover has been examining geological features and collecting samples from the Red Planet that are critical to the first step of the Mars sample return campaign leading to carried out by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). Scientists want to study Martian samples with powerful laboratory equipment on Earth to search for signs of ancient microbial life and better understand the processes that have shaped the surface of Mars.
“Anniversaries are a time for reflection and celebration, and the team of people working with Perseverance have been doing a lot of both,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. “Perseverance has surveyed and conducted data collection on hundreds of intriguing geological features, collected 15 rock cores, and created the first sample repository on another world. With the start of the next scientific campaign, known as the ‘Upper Fan’ (‘head of the alluvial fan’), on February 15, we hope to increase that count very soon”.
In addition to the rock cores, Perseverance has also collected two regolith samples and one atmospheric sample, and sealed three core tubes.
Numbers play an important role in the life of a Mars rover mission, not least because the team is made up of an impressive number of scientists (who generally don’t care about numbers) and engineers (who love them). , but because statistics provide the best and most efficient insight into vehicle trends and performance.
For example, the mission can tell not only that the rover has driven 14.97 kilometers (9.3 miles), but also that as of February 14, its left front wheel has made 9,423 revolutions, or turns on its axis. Mission personnel may know not only that the Oxygen Extraction In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) technology demonstration has produced 92.11 grams (3.25 ounces) of oxygen , but also that the Gas Dust Removal Tool (gDRT), the small gas blowing device installed on the robotic arm, has blown 62 times to remove residual dust and particles produced by activities rock abrasion.
“We work with a lot of numbers,” said Perseverance project deputy manager Steve Lee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California. “We collect them, we evaluate them, we compare them, and more times than we care to admit, we bore our loved ones with them at family dinners.”
Having said that, here are some of the most up-to-date statistics regarding the first two Earth years of Perseverance’s operations on the surface of Jezero. Some statistics may seem obscure to outsiders of the mission; others are more immediate, but all underscore how productive the mission has been.
Perseverance Science Statistics
The rover carries seven scientific instruments, and all have been busy.
- Laser images obtained with the scientific instrument SuperCam: 230,554
- Soundings by the ground penetrating radar called the Radar Imager for the Mars Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX) which studies the underground rock layers: 676,828
- Martian audio recordings recorded by SuperCam’s microphone: 662
- Hours of Mars weather recorded by the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instrument: 15,769.1 hours
- Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) X-ray filament operating hours: 298.2 hours
- Laser images obtained with the Analysis of Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument: 4,337,010
- SHERLOC spectroscopy observations: 33
Perseverance Mobility and Operational Stats:
- Along with the huge robotic arm with a drilling rig, the rover has a small sample-handling arm inside its belly.
- Times the rover’s main robotic arm has been removed and stowed: 64
- Times the drill in that arm has touched Mars: 39
- Times drill bits have been changed: 48
- Abrasions made with the drill: 17
- Distance the Z section of the rover’s sample handling arm has traveled up and down: 206.1 meters (676.1 ft)
Perseverance Chamber Statistical Data
Perseverance contains seven science chambers and nine engineering chambers. Together, those cameras have taken more than 166,000 images. This is the image count for several of the cameras:
- Mastcam-Z: 86.66
- Navigation cameras: 21,571
- Front cameras to avoid obstacles: 3,909
- Rear cameras to avoid obstacles: 474
- Sample and storage system chamber: 1,321
- SuperCam Microscopic Remote Imaging Camera: 2,825
- SHERLOC Engineering and Operations Wide Angle Survey Sensor (SHERLOC WATSON): 5,754
- SHERLOC Contextual Image Generator: 2,260
- SkyCam by MEDA: 1,831
- PIXL Micro Context Camera: 1,012
- Entry, descent and landing cameras: 33,279
The descent stage supporting NASA’s Perseverance rover can be seen plummeting through the Martian atmosphere in this image taken on February 18, 2021 with the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. An ellipse indicates Perseverance’s landing site.
Credit: NASA/Caltech/University of Arizona
“Behind every number is a lot of thought and effort from a very talented group of women and men on the Perseverance team,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at JPL. “We’ve come a long way together, and I can’t think of a better group to work with as we go even further.”
In fact, when Perseverance marks the two-year anniversary of its landing, Mars will be 156 million kilometers (97 million miles) from Earth. The weather in Jezero Crater is expected to be sunny with a maximum temperature of around -14 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit). The rover is instructed to perform remote scientific research, generate oxygen with MOXIE, and take images of a spot in Jezero crater called “Jenkins Gap.” And the people on the mission team are expected to take at least a moment to remember where they were and how they felt two years ago, when Perseverance touched down on Mars.
More about the mission
A key goal for the Perseverance Mars mission is astrobiology, which includes storing samples that could contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and climate in the past, pave the way for human exploration of the red planet, and be the first mission to collect and store Martian rocks and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and bring them back to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes the Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare humanity for exploration of the red planet.
JPL, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
You can read about other highlights of the first two years of Perseverance on Mars here: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/highlights/
For more information about Perseverance, visit the website: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Read this story in English here.