NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover will attempt to make oxygen on Mars

NASA has revealed details about the highly anticipated Mars 2020 rover.

According to NASA, Mars 2020 rover will give us a way to know the red planet better. The rover that NASA is sending to Mars in 2020 will carry seven instruments geared including a device that produce oxygen.

NASA has sent a series of robotic vehicles to Mars — the latest is the Curiosity rover which launched in 2012 — and hopes to have people exploring the surface of Earth’s neighboring planet by the 2030s.

Six years from now, there will be a new NASA robot heading to the Red Planet: the Mars 2020 rover. On 31^st July, NASA announced the seven instruments that will be carried on the unnamed rover to Mars in six years. These instruments were selected out of a whopping 58 proposals received last January, and include technologies developed in international partnerships.

“Today we take another important step on our journey to Mars,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent statement. “Mars exploration will be this generation’s legacy, and the Mars 2020 rover will be another critical step on humans’ journey to the Red Planet.”

“While getting to and landing on Mars is hard,” he added, “Curiosity was an iconic example of how our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way for humans to pioneer Mars and beyond.”

Facts about Mars 2020 Rover:

*New Curiosity rover set will feature seven powerful instruments

*Vehicle will journey to Mars in 2020 to take incredibly detailed images that will ‘knock your socks off’ with an improved MastCam

*SuperCam and Sherloc will detect organic compounds in rocks

*Next generation rover will also include ‘Moxie’ – a machine that converts carbon dioxide to pure oxygen for rocket fuel

*Vehicle will bring intact samples back to Earth without crushing them

*Rover will have a life span of one full Martian year – 687 days on Earth

*Nasa hopes the  Mars 2020 rover will demonstrate technology for a human exploration of the planet and look for signs of life

About the instruments:

One of the scientific payloads is called Mastcam-Z, a camera with panoramic, stereoscopic and zoom abilities. Another called SuperCam can analyze the chemical and mineral composition of rocks, while the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) can determine the elemental composition of surface minerals. The third one called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) uses UV light to detect organic compounds, while Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) will attempt to produce oxygen from Martian carbon dioxide. Then there’s the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) that will monitor the environmental conditions on the planet, and finally, the Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Exploration (RIMFAX) equipped with a ground-penetrating radar that’ll give us a glimpse of what’s beneath the planet’s surface.

Michael Meyer, Lead Scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, offers an analogy: Say you want to analyze a slice of Boston cream pie. The coring system would preserve the carefully laid layers of custard and chocolate, whereas the grinding system would provide you a light brown paste. By maintaining the structure of the rock, scientists can learn more about the history and environment of the rock’s formation, explains Meyer. There are currently no definitive plans to retrieve the samples Mars 2020 collects, but sealed samples can be stored for upwards of 20 years.

Mars 2020 is an international effort involving more than 50 institutions around the world. The entire mission will cost approximately $1.9 billion U.S., with $130 million devoted to developing the seven instruments onboard. That’s a big chunk of change, but it’s worth noting that the Curiosity mission cost nearly $2.5 billion. NASA mission planners explain that reproducing the basic infrastructure of Curiosity for Mars 2020, including using leftover parts; will significantly decrease the cost of the new mission.

On the other hand NASA hopes to eventually have a man on Mars within the next two decades, but SpaceX founder Elon Musk recently expressed his confidence that humanity will reach Mars by 2026.

NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover will attempt to make oxygen on Mars