Mars rovers: Past, present and future
Sydney Hollingsworth. 02/06/2021
Since the dawn of humanity, people have turned their gazes to the heavens time and time again. The stars and planets of the night sky have always been things of mystery. The more we learn about our own solar system, the more questions seem to arise. In recent years, astronomers have turned their attention to our closest neighbor, the Red Planet.
Once thought to be a barren, dusty expanse, Mars is now believed to provide our best chance at an off-world settlement. With the discovery of frozen water and the possibility of past life on Mars, plenty of questions have been plaguing scientists and will most likely be answered with the help of the same technology that dug them up in the first place: Martian rovers.
The topic of Mars rovers has graced headlines many times since the Sojourner rover and Pathfinder lander first touched the planet’s dusty surface. Civilians and researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory alike have grown a sentimental attachment to these scientific instruments working away so far from home.
There have been a total of four successful Mars rovers, all by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Southern California. The use of rovers gives an advantage over landers, which are stationary, and orbiters, which can only observe the surface of Mars from the upper atmosphere. They also give mission control the ability to direct rovers towards new, promising areas and collect samples from multiple locations.
The first Mars rover, Sojourner, was launched on Dec. 4, 1996 and landed on the Red Planet on July 4th of the following year. Sojourner was accompanied by the Pathfinder lander, which relayed the rover’s gathered information back to Earth. A scientific innovation of its time, the lander relied mostly on a parachute and airbags rather than its rockets to land.
The mission was only meant to last seven days, but the Sojourner rover spent a total of 83 days studying the surface of Mars, never venturing further than 40 feet from the Pathfinder lander. The rover finally stopped responding on Sept. 27, 1997, likely due to a failed battery. Sojourner was able to capture the first photos from the surface of Mars, as well as collect measurements of chemicals in the planet’s atmosphere and dust.
The two Mars Exploration Rovers, launched just one month apart towards opposite sides of the planet, were built in just 34 months by the same laboratory. The team took eight-hour shifts to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to complete the sizable project and even continued to send software updates while the rovers were en route to Mars.
The first twin was Spirit, which was launched on June 10, 2003 and landed on Jan. 4, 2004. Unlike Sojourner, Spirit boasted a built-in lander, eliminating the need to stay close to a stationary lander in order to relay information back to Earth. The main goals of the mission were to investigate the geological features of Mars and areas that may have once had water, take pictures of the surface with a 360-degree camera and send these discoveries back to Earth with the help of NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey satellite. Three course corrections, a landing that was eight miles off the target and a brief radio silence just 17 days into the mission had Spirit off to a rough start, but the rover ended up lasting over six years and traveled just under five miles before succumbing to the harsh Martian winter.
The Opportunity rover landed on the rocky surface of Mars on Jan. 25, 2004. This rover would go on to discover water and sedimentary rock on Mars, inspiring the search for possible life.
Like the Spirit rover, Opportunity’s life expectancy was estimated at 90 to 100 days, at which point, dust build-up on the solar panels would presumably cut off its power supply. However, NASA was unable to take into account the extremely strong winds of Mars. These winds kept Opportunity’s solar panels clean for 14 and a half years, longer than every other Mars rover combined. During this time, it traveled over 28 miles across the treacherous Martian plains. The rover’s famous last transmission to Earth in June of 2018 - “My battery is low and it’s getting dark” - tugged at the heartstrings of people around the world when Opportunity found itself caught in a strong dust storm that blocked out the sun. NASA finally concluded attempts for reconnection after nearly eight months.
The fourth and only currently active martian rover, Curiosity, landed on Aug. 6, 2012 and is still relaying information back to Earth today. As the largest rover ever sent to space, as it is about the size of an SUV, its landing brought up a few unique challenges. Airbags alone would not be enough to break the rover’s fall, so a parachute and precise rockets had to be used instead. Curiosity’s mission is to gather information on Martian geology and climate and answer the question of whether or not Mars could have ever supported life, all to better prepare NASA for a future human settlement on the planet.
In 2013, the Curiosity rover discovered that Mars had previously supported conditions favorable to life and further confirmed this in 2014 when it found organic material, the building blocks of life as we know it. In 2017, Curiosity was updated with a software called Autonomous Exploration Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS), allowing it to choose targets by itself and making it the first artificial intelligence on a faraway spacecraft. The rover currently works with multiple international Mars orbiters to relay information back to Earth.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars 2020 mission aims to search for ancient microbial life on Mars, measure radiation levels, gather information on climate and collect rock and soil samples to be returned to Earth in the future with the help of a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The star of this mission will be NASA’s most advanced rover yet, named Perseverance. The rover will utilize technology expected to be used in future Mars settlements, such as a system to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. Perseverance will also be transporting a helicopter drone called Ingenuity, the first aircraft in another world. If the drone succeeds, NASA will consider future aerial missions on Mars. Perseverance and Ingenuity were launched on July 30, 2020 and are expected to land on Feb. 18 of this year.
The future of humanity’s relationship with Mars will likely depend on what Perseverance finds. Every past Mars rover has made discoveries that have completely changed our understanding of the planet, and as the first rover to take into account the possibility of past life on Mars, Perseverance has its work cut out for it. Hopefully, whatever it finds will shed further light on the many mysteries of the Red Planet.
Cover Photo: (360 Cities)
