NASA Perseverance Mars Rover’s Earthly Twin Is Moved to New Home – SciTechDaily

Fabricate you appreciate NASA’s next Mars rover has a virtually an analogous sibling on Earth for testing? Even better, it’s about to roll for the first time thru a duplicate Martian panorama.

As NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance hurtles thru dispute in direction of the Pink Planet, the six-wheeler’s twin is ready to roll right here on Earth.

A paunchy-scale engineering model of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover — equipped with wheels, cameras, and tough computer programs to aid it power autonomously — has dazzling moved into its storage home at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. This rover model handed its first driving take a look at in a moderately tame warehouselike meeting room at JPL on September 1, 2020. Engineers save a matter to to snatch it out next week into the Mars Yard, where a field of red dirt studded with rocks and different barriers simulates the Pink Planet’s floor.

A paunchy-scale engineering model of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover now resides in a storage facing the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Credit rating: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Perseverance’s mobility team can’t wait to lastly power our take a look at rover outside,” acknowledged Anais Zarifian, the mobility take a look at bed engineer at JPL. “Right here is the take a look at robotic that comes closest to simulating the valid mission operations Perseverance will ride on Mars — with wheels, eyes, and brains all collectively — so this rover is going to be in particular stress-free to work with.”

Wait, Why Does Perseverance Need a Twin?

Perseverance isn’t flying to Mars with a mechanic. To steer clear of as many surprising elements as that that it is possible you’ll perchance perchance also find of after the rover lands on Feb. 18, 2021, the team wants this Earth-certain car contrivance take a look at bed (VSTB) rover to gauge how hardware and application will produce sooner than they transmit commands up to Perseverance on Mars. This rover model will possible be in particular priceless for finishing up a paunchy design of application exams so the team can ship up patches while Perseverance is en route to Mars or after it has landed.

And dazzling esteem Perseverance has a fitting title — one which captures the exertions of getting the rover on its manner to Mars amid an epidemic — its twin has a title, too: OPTIMISM. Whereas OPTIMISM is an acronym for Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars, the title is moreover a nod to the mantra of the team that spent two years planning and assembling it.

“The Mars 2020 Perseverance take a look at bed team’s motto is ‘No optimism allowed,’” acknowledged Matt Stumbo, the lead for the VSTB rover on the take a look at bed team. “So we named the take a look at rover OPTIMISM to remind us of the work we’ve got to realize to totally take a look at the contrivance. Our job is to search out complications, now now not dazzling hope actions will work. As we work thru the elements with OPTIMISM, we accomplish self belief in Perseverance’s capabilities and self belief in our ability to design on Mars.”

Nearly Identical

OPTIMISM is virtually an analogous to Perseverance: It’s miles the an analogous size, has the an analogous mobility contrivance and high driving walk (0.094 mph, or 0.15 kph), and aspects the an analogous distinctive “head,” identified because the a long way-off sensing mast. After a second segment of setting up at the beginning place aside of the recent year, this could hang the paunchy suite of science instruments, cameras, and computer “brains” Perseverance has, plus its queer contrivance for gathering rock and soil samples.

But since OPTIMISM lives at JPL, it moreover aspects some Earthly differences. For one thing, while Perseverance gets its energy from a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (a more or much less nuclear battery that has reliably powered dispute missions because the 1960s), OPTIMISM aspects an umbilical twine that could well be plugged in for electrical energy. That twine moreover affords an ethernet connection, allowing the mission team to ship commands to and acquire engineering knowledge again from OPTIMISM with out placing in the radios Perseverance uses for dialog. And whereas Perseverance comes with a heating contrivance to preserve it warmth in the frigid atmosphere of Mars, OPTIMISM depends on a cooling contrivance for working in hot Southern California summers.

Welcome to the Family

OPTIMISM isn’t JPL’s only VSTB rover. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, which has been exploring the Pink Planet because it landed in 2012, has a twin named MAGGIE (Mars Computerized Huge Gizmo for Constructed-in Engineering). MAGGIE has been serving to the Curiosity team in particular with suggestions for driving across tough terrain and drilling rocks.

OPTIMISM and MAGGIE will dwell aspect-by-aspect in the Mars Yard, giving JPL engineers a two-vehicle storage for the first time.

“Missions that are working require excessive-constancy replicas of their programs for testing,” Stumbo acknowledged. “The Curiosity mission has learned classes from MAGGIE that had been very now now not going to be taught any different manner. Now that we have OPTIMISM, the Perseverance mission is successfully equipped to be taught what they need to succeed on Mars.”

The Perseverance rover’s astrobiology mission will look indicators of outmoded microbial life. This could well also moreover symbolize the planet’s local weather and geology, pave the style for human exploration of the Pink Planet, and be the first planetary mission to acquire and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dirt). Subsequent missions, currently below consideration by NASA in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would ship spacecraft to Mars to acquire these cached samples from the floor and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 mission is portion of a bigger program that entails missions to the Moon as one contrivance to prepare for human exploration of the Pink Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will save a sustained human presence on and across the Moon by 2028 thru NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, constructed and manages operations of the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.