Ln July 4, 1997, the United States celebrated its national holiday by placing its first mobile robot, Sojourner, on Mars. By coincidence, in Toulouse, the Cité de l’espace had been inaugurated a few days before this event which was to upset the exploration of the Red Planet.
A quarter of a century later, the same City decided to put Mars at the heart of its activities and it is no longer a coincidence: since 1997, five other rovers have landed there; the American-European Mars sample return program has begun, which should be completed in 2031; the return to the Moon is envisaged as training before the human conquest of Mars; finally, some, like Elon Musk, start dreaming out loud of colonization in the more or less long term. As we have understood, Mars will increasingly be in the news for the next few years and the center for scientific culture in Toulouse, the European space capital, could only support the phenomenon.
A characteristic ocher color
In this reddish circus will enter several times a day the last two tenants of Mars, namely the American rover Perseverance and its Chinese colleague Zhurong. These are also life-size replicas but much faster than their models, moving around the Red Planet with extreme slowness and caution. For the safety of the public, neither indulge in the laser shots that genuine rovers perform in order to remotely analyze the chemical composition of Martian rocks.
A single animator controls twice the American rover against a hundred people to pilot the real one
Another difference with reality: a single animator remote control the double of the American rover whereas, “to fly the real thing, you need a hundred people a day, recalls Sylvestre Maurice, astrophysicist at the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), whose team provided Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument. Some take care of the wheels, others of the engines, instruments, batteries, etc. » The Perseverance from Toulouse, however, uses its articulated arm to mime a coring and the collection of a Martian sample.
The intention is therefore to show the public the how and why of the exploration of Mars, its obstacles, the ambitions of the researchers. But, despite all the efforts put into the reconstruction, certain details remind us that we are on Earth, such as the powerful autan wind which cleans a blue sky, so blue, while that of Mars is pink…
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