Now under construction—NASA’s newest rover.
Still without a name, the souped-up successor to Curiosity won’t launch for two years.
But already, engineers are “bolting together the bits and pieces of hardware,” says Ken Farley of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “You can see the whole spacecraft coming together.”
Scientists don’t expect the mission to discover existing life. “We think that’s pretty unlikely,” says Farley.
Instead, NASA’s looking for signs of past life—“potential biosignatures,” he says—like organic molecules, “the quintessential biosignature.”
Organics, already found on Mars, aren’t alive themselves. But they are prerequisites for life, perhaps lingering somewhere within three billion year old rocks scattered across the alien soil.
“Ancient Mars was much more conducive to life than it is now,” Farley says. “Are there rocks that could have preserved any evidence of life?”
Finding those wispy markers won’t be easy. Cosmic rays, penetrating the planet’s slight atmosphere—about one percent of Earth’s—have pummeled the Martian surface for eons.
“Those rocks have been exposed to intense radiation for a long time,” says Farley. “That tends to degrade organic molecules.”
The rover will take dozens of rock samples, put them in pen-size tubes, then deposit the tubes around the planet for pickup by a later mission.
Ultimately, those samples go back to Earth for analysis.
Says Farley: “The burden of proof for finding life is huge. The kinds of detection instruments we can fly today (on the rovers) are good, but not like what you get in a state of the art terrestrial laboratory.”
This time, the rover has a companion.
“We’re flying a helicopter,” says Farley.
The chopper is drone-size, with a payload of a few pounds, “batteries and motors in a tiny package.”
Early flights are basic—scientists making sure the drone can liftoff, hover, and land. The craft is “largely autonomous,” Farley says. “We can’t joystick it.”
But they can do video; a camera on the rover will record the first flight.
“We can film the thing taking off,” he marvels. Here's hoping the chopper won't need a second take.
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