'Perserverance' - a look at the key gadgets inside the new 2020 Mars rover...

Exciting times ... a lot of missions are planned up for making humans interplanetary species, including Artemis for moon & Mars missions but before that can happen a preparation data needs to be collected via various gadgets to help support human missions to those planetory destinations. 

Let's dive into the 3 exciting technological innovations on board the 2020 rover - 

1. Mars Helicopter - flight

The fact that mar's atmospheric conditions and gravity are completely different from that on earth leaves a lot of technical innovation involved in designing a craft which can fly on the surface of the planet. 

Before we delve further let's consider the facts: gravity on mar's is - 38% of earth.

A similar condition on earth for flying is at 100, 000 ft in earth & maximum a plane flies on earth is 85000 ft.

0.7 Mach is what's a fair number for blades not get distorted thereby flaking the flight.

2900 rpm - blades need to spin at this number in order for the helicopter to have the lift in mars.

500 rpm - is usually the standard on earth. 

1.8 kgs <  - the weight has to be this much for the flight to pick off.

The blades of the helicopter stand at - 35 gms - equivalent to the mass of 6 quarters with carbon fibre layout.

How was this tested? 

Tested on earth with gravity offload technique by which only 38% of its weight had to lifted.

It uses a work mode - collective plus cyclic which gives a horizontal vector,

It has to be autonomous & if we send sequences of commands it will take - 20 min to reach, which is not possible. So with gyros, accelerometer, cameras, altimeter, inclinometer apart from sensors plus closed loop control algorithm, the helicopter gets the measurements and decisions for itself & feeds to the blade so that the helicopter moves in a particular direction.

It needs a whole day  to recharge & can operate for 35 min to 1hr.

It has to withstand 80G launch loads which escaping from earth & 9G - Mars entry loads before it can start to operate.

Once there, it will use the frangibolt - released for startup, which is basically releasing bolt by increasing the stress.

The device will charge & at around 1100 hrs Martian time will attempt to fly.

2. MOXIE

Also known as the Mars Oxygen ISRU (in situ resource utilization) experiment.

Mars has 96% CO2 - carbon dioxide in it's atmosphere so the idea is to find a way to create oxygen using this as a resource input.

96% CO2 - C O O — idea is to get those 2 OO’s back to have Oxygen.

The combined knowledge of :

• Electrochemistry 
• Ecopoiesis - signal bacteria and algae

is used to create oxygen.

The size of the equipment resembles - a toaster oven for now but will be 200 times bigger to support creating oxygen for humans in future.

Take in mars atmosphere &  - 

- - run it into a unit called as solid oxide electrolysis unit or also a fuel cell in reverse.

- - heated up to 800 degree celcius

- - inject energy into the cathode & anode

- - oxygen gets separated from CO2 & comes out of an output line.

- - waste gases come out of the other line.

How is it tested on earth? By simulating the conditions of Mar's atmosphere. 

Mar's atmosphere contains the below %age of gases - 

• 96% - CO2
• 2% - Ar
• 1.9%- N2
• 0.14% - O2
• 0.06% - CO

Mars mixed gas.

Further to the above - the tests also provide low pressures & high pressures to compensate for the  pressure differences which will be found on Martian craters.

3. TRN 

TRNS - Terrain Relative Navigation System

The Jezero Crater on Mars is 28 mile - 45 kilometre wide crater, where the 'Perseverance' rover is expected to land.

The current navigation systems without terrain relative navigation response are equipped to land with a probability of 80-85%, but with this systems the accuracy jumps up to 99%.

Avoid hazards that you know of - match image with the images stored of the hazardous terrains and make a decision on landing.

Convolutional Neural Network for crater detection - reduces state estimation.

Sensors to detect craters - depth sextant and scanning telescope were used earlier by humans. 

The convolutional neural networks use

—> prediction image and run it against detected craters comes up with matched craters  which creates ekf  - co-ordinates input to determine state of the space craft.

measurement noise covariance matrix - is calculated to gives the confidence on landing site.

All of these gadgets provide key inputs for humans to navigate, transport & breathe crucial to future habitation on mars.