When the Perseverance rovertouched down on the surfaceof the Red Planet in 2020 , kickstarting a unexampled contemporaries of exploration on Mars , a shockwave went out as uranology partizan across the ball take a breath out a corporate sigh of relief . However , down on a planetroughly 54.6 million kilometers ( 33.9 million miles ) away was only the start of Perseverance ’s journeying . We talked to Professor Brian Cox about what came next , the topic of his new plastic film for the BBC , Seven Days On Mars .
In the moving-picture show , we follow Prof. Brian Cox as he direct to NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Lab ( JPL ) for a behind - the - scenes glimpse of missionary station control forMars 2020 – one of the most challenging missions ever launched , which seeks to establish if life once exist on the Red Planet .
We spoke to Cox about his clock time following Perseverance ’s every move as it makes its way towards an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater and attempts to break the record for the longest distance traveled on another satellite in seven days .
Cox got to take a look at life in Mars 2020 mission control for seven days as they tracked Perseverance’s progress. Image credit: BBC / Arrow International Media / Kelly Wundsam
In his workweek of undivided admission , Cox follow the teams presently direct the Perseverance bird of passage and theIngenuity helicopteras they endeavor to traverse 200 meters per daytime across the Jezero Crater . The site is thought to be a hopeful candidate for uncover grounds of past life , but directing a wanderer across the unpredictable terrain of a satellite tens of millions of miles away comes with unique challenges .
Each solar day , NASA engineer ping instructions up to Perseverance who then take on the journey autonomously , follow the instructions but with the inherent capacity to trouble resolve certain obstacles should they appear . In that time , the JPL team has to wait until they next reach a sign and can see how Perseverance has progressed .
These pocket enable Cox to do a bit of search at JPL , let in one particularly memorable chronological sequence where he head up to the Mars Perseverance roamer that never leave planet Earth . This replica is near - very to that on Mars and was able to show off its redirection skills as Cox offer himself to be run over in a biz of “ interplanetary chicken ” .
Cox with Percy 2.0 at NASA’s JPL, where the mission is run from. Image credit: BBC/Arrow International Media/Kelly Wundsam
However , these rover stand up on the shoulders ofthose that number before themand are now so advanced that trend a Professor of Particle Physics is well-to-do , especially given it ’s cruise at a cool speed of 0.12 kilometers per hour .
The Jezero Crater wasfilled by a huge lakearound 3.8 billion years ago , and – if Earth is to be believe – where we find H2O , we often find life . This is what the Mars 2020 mission and Perseverance endeavor to encounter , and should they be successful it could change everything we know about life in the population .
