NASA unveils landing site for Mars mission

NASA has revealed where our next mission to Mars will take place and says it will revolutionise how we think about the planet and its ability to harbour life.

It took five long years to make a decision but when the stakes are this high, you have to consider and scrutinise all the available options.

That is precisely what scientists at NASA and researchers from around the world have been doing in recent years. They debated every available detail of more than 60 potential locations to decide on where the space agency will send its upcoming mission to Mars.

They periodically whittled the candidates down until they were left with four finalists earlier this year — and now they have announced the winner.

When the Mars rover touches down on the Red Planet in a few years, it will do so at an alien patch of land known as the Jezero Crater.

The site — which astronomers have wanted to visit for some time — is home to a fossilised river delta that formed as water trickled into an ancient crater lake.

Scientists believe that water carved channels and transported sediments to form fans and deltas within lake basins on the ancient planet. Examination of spectral data acquired from orbit show that some of these sediments have minerals that indicate chemical alteration by water — a key ingredient for microbial life.

“The landing site in Jezero Crater offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could potentially answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a press conference.

Jezero Crater’s ancient lake-delta system offers many promising sampling targets of at least five different kinds of rock, including clays and carbonates that have high potential to preserve signatures of past life.

The above image of the site combines information from two instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars and the Context Camera.

Unlike most Mars rovers and landers of prior decades, the upcoming mission will not only look for hints of warm, watery conditions in the past but to also set up the search for life itself.

The rover will collect rock and soil samples and store them in a cache on the planet’s surface. NASA and the European Space Agency are studying future mission concepts to retrieve the samples and return them to Earth. As a result, the Jezero Crater landing site will set the stage for the next decade of Mars exploration.

“Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionise how we think about Mars and its ability to harbour life,” Mr Zurbuchen said.

There was lots to consider when choosing where exactly to visit the planet, such as engineering constraints, the surface elevation and atmosphere at the landing site, the surface terrain, the climate (it’s nicer around the equator) and, most importantly, what scientists hope to find, study and analyse.

Jezero Crater is located on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. According to NASA, Western Isidis presents some of the oldest and most scientifically interesting landscapes Mars has to offer.

It’s long been considered a desirable place to explore but until now it has proven too risky to get to.

“The Mars community has long coveted the scientific value of sites such as Jezero Crater, and a previous mission contemplated going there but the challenges with safely landing were considered prohibitive,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

There are high hopes that the hard to reach landing site will revolutionise our understanding about the planet’s past.

The rover is about 3 meters long, 2.7 meters wide, and 2.2 meters tall.

However, advances in rover technology, in particular a new capability called Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) which helps the rover avoid hazardous areas, has given researchers confidence they can avoid the cliffs and rocky terrain around Jezero Crater.

“What was once out of reach is now conceivable, thanks to the 2020 engineering team and advances in Mars entry, descent and landing technologies,” she said.

The Mars 2020 mission will launch from Florida in July or August 2020 and is projected to reach Mars in February 2021.

But the really hard part is still to come.

“Nothing has been more difficult in robotic planetary exploration than landing on Mars,” said Mr Zurbuchen. “The Mars 2020 engineering team has done a tremendous amount of work to prepare us for this decision.

“The team will continue their work to truly understand the TRN system and the risks involved, and we will review the findings independently to reassure we have maximised our chances for success.”