Perseverance - The NASA Mars Rover, Lands Successfully on Mars.
There were millions of people watching live from across the world, history being created by NASA and I was one among those millions, notwithstanding the fact that it was 2.55 AM on Friday - 19th February, when that moment, which everyone was waiting for, arrived to a thunderous applause in the control room in JPL, NASA. What was even more pleasing was the fact that it was Dr Swati Mohan, the Indian American NASA scientist, who is part of this mission, who confirmed that the Perseverance rover had landed on the chosen Martian surface. “Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life,” with these words, Dr Swati, who was so very calm and composed all through her live commentary assignment, made an announcement of the Perseverance touchdown on Mars to the thunderous cheers of her compatriot, who erupted in unison at the NASA’s JPL mission control room in California. Dr Swati Mohan had specially chosen to sport on her forehead that quintessential ‘Bindi’ - a sociocultural trade mark for women in India, a practice which connected her to her roots in India. Therefore it was no wonder that Dr Swati Mohan was all over the print and electronic media in India and so also she was trending on Tweeter for a couple of days.
The Mars missions have had a special focus last year. Besides NASA, both China and UAE too have launched their mars mission at about the same time as that of NASA in 2020. The UAE Mars mission is very special because it is headed by a lady scientist, an extraordinary achievement for any gulf country, which is sure to kindle interest in science among the young girl students in the gulf nations. Sarah Al Amiri is an Iranian born lady scientist who migrated to the United Arab Emirates and she is now mantling the all important position of scientist in charge of the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission to Mars. Our neighbour, China too launched their mission to the Martian surface last year. China's Tianwen-1 probe was launched around the same time as that of Perseverance in July 2020. The Chinese mission has sent its first image of the Mars surface, as it prepares to touch down on the Red Planet later this year.
The NASA Perseverance Rover after a 203-day journey, covering a distance of 472 million kilometers from Earth, landed safely very close to the chosen surface of the Mars at the Jezero crater, after carrying out set out maneuvering to guide itself to the chosen landing site. It landed about 1.6 Kms from the planned landing site and this accuracy is something which speaks volumes for the scientific and technological excellence of the untiring scientists and engineers of NASA who had persevered to make this mission a grand success. One such scientist/ engineer who is part of this mission is Dr Swati Mohan. The mission team announced that ‘the rover landed itself flawlessly’. Very soon "Percy," as the spacecraft is affectionately called at the mission control, sent back its first images of the landing site immediately after touchdown, which showed the rover's shadow on the surface of its landing site of Jezero Crater. The Perseverance rover’s goal is to study the site in detail for its past conditions and seek the very signs of ancient life on Mars. Its mission is to identify and collect the most compelling rock core and soil samples, which a future mission could retrieve and bring back to Earth for more detailed study. Perseverance will also test technologies needed for the future human and robotic exploration of Mars.
The landing location, the Jezero crater, is believed to be the best possible scientific site in our entire solar system, which can possibly throw some light on the origin of life in our solar system. It is for this specific reason that NASA chose Jezero crater as the landing site for the Perseverance rover. The NASA scientists also believe that the area where the Perseverance has landed was once flooded with water and was home to an ancient river delta. Scientists believe that some 3.5 billion years ago, river channels spilled over the Jezero crater wall and created a lake and therefore it is hypothesised that the crater may be home to an evidence that water carried clay minerals from the surrounding area into this crater lake. This means that microbial life may have evolved on this wet Martian surface and could have lived in Jezero crater during the period when it had flowing water on its surface. The Perseverance rover has therefore been tasked to collect samples from this surface which will be brought back to the Earth by future NASA missions to search for signs of the early life remains, which might be found in lakebed or shoreline sediments of the crater. Although the site chosen for the landing of the Perseverance on Mars is very precious from the scientific research point of view, but then for the engineers and scientists of NASA this site for the landing was an arduous task with herculean challenges. Considering the sites significance to the objective of the mission, notwithstanding the challenges for landing on the Jezero crater, NASA has chose this site to land the Perseverance rover.
Over the period the Perseverance rover will collect sample data from this crater, which will be carried back by the future missions to Mars. Collecting the samples and bringing them back to Earth for analysis will be another breathtaking technological achievement of NASA, which it has planned. These samples collected by the Perseverance may reveal the secrets to the ancient life on Mars that existed on this crater some 3 billion years ago. Understanding the origin of the evolution of the cellular lifeforms on the Jezero crater on the Martian surface, the NASA scientists believe, will perhaps help us in understanding the genesis of life on our planet Earth and in a way lead to unravelling the mystery ‘Are we alone in this universe?
An icing on the cake to the live NASA telecast of the Perseverance landing mission event was the presence of an Indian origin NASA Engineer/Scientist, Swati Mohan, who has been working on this project for the past eight years. She was also one of the key commentators from the NASA mission control room. She was at the commentary in those crucial seven minutes of Entry Descent and Touchdown of the Perseverance rover. Dr Swati Mohan has a PhD in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical engineering from MIT. She emigrated to US with her parents from Bangalore, when she was just one year old and was raised in Northern Virginia / Washington DC metro area. My classmate from school, Viju Patil, who too has migrated to the US and settled there, informed me that an Indian origin Kannada speaking lady scientist who works for the JPL - NASA will be one of the commentators. He therefore urged me to watch the program live. Until then I was not inclined to watch the program since it was expected to land around 3AM on 19th early morning (IST). Courtesy my fried Viju Patil I remained awake to watch the program live and I thoroughly enjoyed the coverage including those immemorial moments when Dr Swati made that historic announcement ‘ touchdown confirmed’. Viju also had given a brief background about Dr Swati and has said that her parents are from Karnataka and that she speaks Kannada at home. Perhaps it was this motivation from my friend, which made me watch this live telecast of Perseverance landing, which I will treasure.
Dr Swati Mohan, who in one of the interview that she gave post the Perseverance landing said ‘I consider myself American, and I consider myself to be Indian too’, emigrated from India (Bangalore, Karnataka) to the United States with her parents when she was 1 year old. By age 9 Swati was enjoying watching intently ‘Star Trek' programs and she was fascinated by the beautiful depictions of the new regions of the universe that the astronauts were exploring. She therefore envisaged that she wanted to "find new and beautiful places in the universe." But then as with most kids she had other dreams too and one of which was to become a paediatrician. But then when she turned 16 and attended her physics class things changed for her. As luck would have it she had a great teacher in Physics and his way of teaching the subject captivated Swati and she soon realised how application of knowledge of physics in engineering is what leads to space exploration. There was no turning back from then on. She instantly chose "engineering" subject to fulfil her interest in space exploration. She was supported by her parents to pursue subjects of her interest and thus Dr Swati joined for a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. She then completed her MS and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics and the rest is history which she went onto create while landing the Perseverance rover on Mars. The first call that she made after the landing of the rover on Mars was to her parents - Srinivas and Jyoti Mohan.
Srinivas and Jyoti Mohan, the proud parents of Swati, were ecstatic that their daughter, Dr Swati Mohan, had just completed her onerous task of guiding the landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars. “My parents were the first people I called... They were completely proud and overwhelmed!” she said in the interview. Dr Swati Mohan, is the guidance and controls operations lead for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission. When asked what prompted her to sport a Bindi, Swati, In the interview to Savita Patel for the Quint, said, “It was an Appropriate Moment to Dress Up For. I Decided to Wear a Bindi”. She added “ I don’t necessarily wear it every day, but I do wear it when I want to dress appropriately, when being seen by others, to look professional and look nice, to look presentable. I made sure to put it on before I left the house”. Excited about her achievement Swati said ‘I have to say that I was so focused on what I had to do... I made that touch down, and it took a few minutes to sink in after I made the touch down call”.
Dr Swati Mohan has been a member of the Perseverance Rover mission since the beginning at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She has also been a part of various other important missions of NASA namely projects Cassini (a mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation flown spacecraft to the Moon). Most importantly she has worked on the terrain relative mapping, which is a specialty for the Perseverance mission. It is this new technology, which helped the Perseverance to navigate its landing on the right surface of the Jezero crater. Apart from being the lead systems engineer during the development process of this technology, she has also looked after the team and schedules the mission control staffing.
When Dr Swati announced the confirmation of the Perseverance rover touch down on Mars she made history. NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is the first space craft to use this new technology - terrain relative navigation system, which Dr Swati was involved in for aiding the rover to assist itself with the Artificial Intelligence to land safely on Mars. As the guidance, navigation, and control operations lead, she was involved in developing and executing the new system. Perseverance is the first space craft to integrate this new technology in its flight. The terrain navigation system has a new sensor that consists of a camera and a second brain. Swati explains how this system functioned “ While Perseverance was on the para-shoot and decelerating, the camera took pictures of Mars. The second brain had preloaded images of Mars from earlier missions. The camera images are compared to the orbital map, to figure out where Perseverance should navigate, just like we compare street signs to a map when we navigate. This allowed for safe target selection — once you know where you are, you can choose where you want to go. Based on pre-entered data, she identified the terrain for safety levels — to avoid sharp, pointy rocks or cliffs. Perseverance could decide where to land, as she was coming down, she had the solution to where she was, where she was going and where she wanted to go. She looked and scanned between two regions and decided to land in a small strip area, in between two features of rocky areas. It was about 2 km south east of the target point- she was well within the landing target area.”
It is truly a momentous occasion that the fantasy like space mission - Perseverance, with an embedded Ingenuity helicopter mission integrated into the mission, worked to the exacting standards of the space mission planning, operation and control, which are rid with monumental challenges that needed tens of hundreds of scientists and engineers to persevere to make it a grand success. The successful landing of Perseverance on the surface of Jezero, encountering those terror 7 minutes’ moments of Entry, Descent and Landing, is that much more creditable considering the Covid pandemic during which this monumental Space mission challenge has been accomplished.
The NASA Perseverance rover, which landed successfully on the Martian surface, has been designed with the key scientific and technological objectives of exploring geologically diverse landing site on Mars, assess ancient habitability, seek signs of ancient life, particularly in special rocks known to preserve signs of life over time, Gather rock and soil samples that could be returned to Earth by a future NASA mission and to demonstrate the technology for future robotic and human exploration. Like with most of the space exploration missions, the Perseverance rover is also carrying specialised scientific instruments to conduct unprecedented science and test new technology on the Red Planet. The mission hopes that these scientific and technological tests would immensely benefit NASA in aspiring to send astronauts to Mars. The new technologies which the Perseverance has carried on board include ;
Mastcam-Z - It is an advanced camera system with panoramic and stereoscopic imaging capability with the ability to zoom. The instrument also will determine mineralogy of the Martian surface and assist with rover operations.
SuperCam - It is an instrument that can provide imaging, chemical composition analysis, and mineralogy at a distance.
Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) - This is an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and high-resolution imager to map the fine-scale elemental composition of Martian surface materials. PIXL will provide capabilities that permit more detailed detection and analysis of chemical elements than ever before.
Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC)- This is a spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and uses an ultraviolet (UV) laser to map mineralogy and organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer to fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements with other instruments in the payload. SHERLOC includes a high-resolution color camera for microscopic imaging of Mars’ surface.
The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) - This is a technology demonstration that will produce oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide. If successful, MOXIE’s technology could be used by future astronauts on Mars to burn rocket fuel for returning to Earth.
Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) - This contains a set of sensors that will provide measurements of temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, relative humidity, and dust size and shape.
The Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX) - This is a ground penetrating radar that will provide centimeter-scale resolution of the geologic structure of the subsurface.
The Perseverance mission created quite a buzz across the world and as expected more than 3.5 million people witnessed Perseverance land on Mars, and the video of Swati’s team celebrating the achievement has gone viral. Dr. Swati has now become a house hold name in India for her achievement. Like most of us in India Swati too likes to watch Bollywood movies. When asked what is on Swati’s agenda in the coming days? She said “Well, for the next few months, she’s going to be busy analysing data coming in from Mars. She also hopes to finally make the time to watch the Akshay Kumar-Vidya Balan-starrer ‘Mission Mangal’, which heralds the Mars orbiter Mission melodramatic story of ISROs achievement. Swati exhibited that extraordinary sense of calmness and self confidence when enduring and communicating the nail-biting final stages of descent of the Perseverance rover from orbit to the ground, in a sequence, which is termed as “seven minutes of terror” because so many things have to go right in this final stages of the mission to pull it off. During that seven minutes, hundreds of engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who have worked on the mission, were standing by to see if nearly a decade of their work pays off. It did pay off off to a thunderous applause of not just those engineers and scientists who persevered to make this monumental mission possible but also millions of the online visitors, who had tuned into witness this historic moment.
Long live science, engineering and its accomplishments for the benefit of humanity.
Jai Vigyan
Images : Courtesy Wikipedia, NASA and tweeter handle of Dr Swati Mohan.
