A nation wearied by a yearlong pandemic and bitterly divided over politics can always reap despair from the news. But this past week brought us another example of the boundless potential for human achievement, and it is worth pausing for a moment to celebrate it.
On Thursday, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars, completing a journey of 293 million miles that began last July, when it launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Given that this is the ninth NASA mission to the red planet, and that we have photos from previous excursions, it’s easy to take this incredible feat of science and engineering for granted, just as too many people did with moon missions, leading to the premature curtailment of the Apollo program. But there are many unique features of the current mission that warrant special attention.
The most important factor is that this endeavor is part of a multistep process that scientists hope will help provide an answer to the eternal question of whether there was ever life on Mars, something that has long been the subject of speculation as well as of science fiction.
The rover landed in an area of the red planet known as the Jezero Crater, which is believed to have been the site of a lake 3.5 billion years ago and of an ancient river delta. The hope is that the rover will spend the next two years exploring the 28-mile-wide area, taking photos, transmitting data, and collecting samples.
To accomplish this, NASA scientists had to build the largest and most sophisticated robotic rover ever deployed. About the size of a car, the rover has more cameras than any previously sent to Mars, capable of zooming and delivering 3D images. It also has seven science instruments. It is going to scrub the Jezero area, looking for fossilized remains that could present clues to any microscopic life that once existed on Mars.
The top of the rover has a laser that can be aimed toward rock formations and sediment and will allow scientists to study their chemistry. That could also help determine where it would be best to collect samples, which would be saved in metal tubes in the hopes that future missions will be able to retrieve them and return the rocks to Earth so they can be studied in more detail for signs of life.
Even as COVID-19 has provided humanity with a reason to contemplate its vulnerability to nature, it has also provided examples of how amazing modern science is. In less than a year, scientists managed to learn COVID-19’s structure, design a vaccine, test it, distribute it around the world, and administer about 200 million doses.
The Mars Perseverance rover is yet another testament to modern man’s ingenuity. To borrow from Paul Simon, “these are the days of miracle and wonder.”
