MARS 2020: SEARCHING FOR LIFE ON MARS

Mars 2020 is a space mission developed by NASA for the search of ancient life clues on Mars . The mission consists of a rover named Perseverance and a small helicopter named Ingenuity . Perseverance has a similar design to its predecessor rover Curiosity but comprises some technical improvements and a lot of devices to investigate on bacterial life .

We aim to ''clues of ancient bacterial life '' because it is believed that in a period of Mars history there might have been conditions favorable to the development  of life . Anyway,  to date we exclude every possibility of life forms on Mars surface. With his harsh environment Mars presents temperatures ranging from -140   °C (min) to 20  °C (max ) and a thin and rarefied atmosphere ( it is so thin that the airscrews of the helicopter have to do 2400 rounds per minute while on Earth, a normal helicopter does 500 rpm )  composed of carbon dioxide  for the 95,32 % not to talk about the terrain composition and sandstorms .

 

This picture compares the atmospheres of the two planets

 

Mars before and after a global dust storm in 2018

To this end , the rover landed on a region of  Mars , named Jezero crater on the 18th February .

Jezero is a crater belonging to the Isidis Basin: the remainder of a meteorite impact that occurred in the initial phases of Mars history .

Mars 2020 scientists think that it could be the  home of  bacterial life clues. Indeed we know that 3.5 billion years ago, Jezero was the site of a large lake, complete with its own river delta. They believe that while the water may be long gone, somewhere within the crater, or perhaps along its rim, biosignatures could be waiting .

 

the reconstruction of Jezero crater while there was still liquid water on Mars

 

The enduring hope of the science team is to find a surface feature that couldn't be attributed to anything but microbial life, like a stromatolite.

Stromatolites are wavy, rocky mounds formed long time ago by microbial life along ancient shorelines and in other environments where metabolic energy and water were plentiful . Such a conspicuous feature would be difficult to chalk up to geologic processes .

Among all the devices Perseverance includes :

·         PIXL  : a device that can fire a laser at a promising target , generating a small plasma cloud that can be analyzed to help determine its chemical composition.

·         SHERLOCK : an instrument with another laser and a camera that can detect concentrations of organic molecules and minerals that have been formed in watery environments.

·       A sample caching system : one of the most complex, capable , and cleanest mechanism ever sent into space , can store up to  43 relatively large  samples .

Naturally these samples will be retrieved in  a mission by NASA and ESA called '' Mars Sample Return '' to bring them back to Earth for studies in laboratories across the globe .

Mars 2020 is the first part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the red planet . Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024 ,NASA will establish a  sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through  the Artemis lunar exploration plans .

Giordano C., 4sc