Ready to roll! NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is nearly ready ahead of a July launch into space to lay groundwork for manned mission to the Red Planet

• NASA’s unnamed Mars 2020 rover is nearing completion ahead of a July mission to the planet’s Jezero Crater
• Rover will be transported to Kennedy Space Center in February where its three sections will be assembled 
• It will then traverse crater in search of sediment samples scientists hope will contain evidence of Martian life

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is nearing completion ahead of a July launch to the Red Planet to lay the groundwork for the space agency’s mission to send humans into deep space.

The space agency released new images of the unnamed robotic rover in the spacecraft assembly area clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on Friday. 

In February, the rover will be shipped to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center where its three sections will be fully assembled ahead of a July launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to a dry lake bed on Mars which is bigger than Manhattan.  

The four-wheeled rover will travel aboard NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket, before scouring the base of the 820-foot-deep Jezero Crater once it lands on the Red Planet in February 2021.

The Mars 2020 Rover in the spacecraft assembly area clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California

Jezero Crater is believed to have an abundance of pristine sediments some 3.5 billion years old that scientists hope will hold evidence of past Martian life. Humans have never before returned sediment samples from Mars.

‘The trick, though, is that we’re looking for trace levels of chemicals from billions of years ago on Mars,’ Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace said. 

‘The rover will collect up to 30 soil samples to be picked up and returned to Earth by a future spacecraft planned by NASA.’ 

The samples will then be collected by a European Space Agency ‘fetch’ rover, due to arrive on the planet in 2028 along with a NASA-built return rocket. They will then be returned to Earth on a ESA orbiter spaceship by 2031.

Earlier this month, the Mars 2020 rover successfully ‘passed its driving test’ in a major mission milestone that saw it move under its own weight ahead of its launch. 

The robotic vehicle had to demonstrate it could move forwards, backwards and pirouette during the more than 10-hour marathon ‘driving test’ on December 17. 

NASA engineers and technicians reposition the Mars 2020 spacecraft descent stage during a tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The four-wheeled rover will scour the base of Mars’ Jezero Crater, an 820-foot-deep crater thought to have been a lake the size of Lake Tahoe, once the craft lands in February 2021 (Pictured: Mars 2020 lead flight systems engineer Jessica Samuels) 

This meant the rover demonstrated all systems were working together. It had to steer, turn and drive in 3ft increments.

NASA said a preliminary assessment of the rover’s test found that it checked all the necessary boxes as it rolled forward and backward and pirouetted in a clean room. 

‘Mars 2020 has earned its driver’s license,’ said Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for Mars 2020.

‘The test unambiguously proved that the rover can operate under its own weight and demonstrated many of the autonomous-navigation functions for the first time.’

As the systems performed well under Earth’s gravity, engineers expect them to perform well under Mars’ gravity, which is only three-eighths as strong.

‘A rover needs to rove, and Mars 2020 did that yesterday,’ said John McNamee, Mars 2020 project manager. ‘We can’t wait to put some red Martian dirt under its wheels.’

 Earlier this month, the Mars 2020 rover successfully ‘passed its driving test’ in a major mission milestone that saw it move under its own weight ahead of its launch

As the systems performed well under Earth’s gravity, engineers expect them to perform well under Mars’ gravity, which is only three-eighths as strong (Pictured: an artist’s impression of the rover on Mars)

The findings of the Mars 2020 research will be crucial to future human missions to the red planet, including the ability to make oxygen on the surface of Mars. 

The Mars 2020 Rover is carrying equipment that can turn carbon dioxide, which is pervasive on Mars, into oxygen for breathing and as a propellant. 

If successful, Mars 2020 will become NASA’s fifth Martian rover to carry out a soft landing, having learned crucial lessons from the most recent Curiosity rover that landed on the planet’s surface in 2012 and continues to traverse a Martian plain southeast of the Jezero Crater. The rover’s official moniker will be chosen next year. 

The Soviet Union is the only other country to successfully land a rover on Mars. China and Japan have attempted unsuccessfully to send orbiters around the Red Planet, while India and Europe’s space agency have successfully lofted an orbiter to the planet.

WHAT IS NASA’S SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM?

Nasa’s Space Launch System, or SLS, is an advanced launch vehicle that will ‘provide the foundation for human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit’, according to the space agency.

Launching with unprecedented thrust power, SLS will carry crews of up to four astronauts in the agency’s Orion spacecraft on missions to explore deep-space destinations.

Offering more payload mass, volume capability and energy to speed missions through space than any current launch vehicle, SLS is designed to evolve over several decades to keep up with modern technologies and payloads.

Nasa’s Space Launch System, or SLS, is an advanced launch vehicle that will ‘provide the foundation for human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit’, according to the space agency (artist’s impression)

These include robotic scientific missions to places like the Moon, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. 

The rocket’s first launch, which will be unmanned, is set for 2020 at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. 

The initial configuration for what SLS can carry past low-Earth orbit and on to the moon is more than 26 metric tons, with a final configuration of at least 45 metric tons.

Nasa intends to send humans to ‘deep-space’ destinations such as Mars and the moon aboard the SLS, with a date for a mission to the red planet set for the 2030s.

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