Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon speaks to us today in The science post of the weekend of a new rover preparing to go to Mars.
franceinfo: This new rover is due to take off next September, and the last tests were carried out this week. ?
This is the Rosalind Franklin rover (named after a c20th century himist and molecular biologist, famous for his work on anthrax and viruses) of the European Space Agency. It is part of the large ExoMars mission, which mobilizes ESA and the Russian space agency. And yes, there it is. Finally, he is ready to go. On Wednesday, January 26, he succeeded in his last test: rolling down from the platform on which he will be placed when he lands on Mars. These are two narrow and steep rails, it was a delicate operation. But this time, everything went well.
Have there been any problems before?
This rover was to leave in 2020, at the same time as Perseverance, the NASA robot. But the launch was postponed due to a parachute problem. This is one of the sensitive points of the mission: the landing on Mars.
The capsule carrying the Rosalind Franklin rover will arrive at 21,000 km/h. You have to slow it down otherwise, of course, it’s a crash. And it’s not obvious because the atmosphere of the red planet is much less dense than the Earth’s atmosphere. Air friction and retrorockets are not enough. Parachutes are essential to avoid the crash. And in 2020, they were working poorly.
During the tests, they were partly torn. But these problems were solved last year. All that remained was to test this fine piloting of the rover. It’s done. Rosalind Franklin has now been placed in a clean room. Only a series of minor tests remain according to the ESA, which will be done in April.
And the launch of the mission is confirmed: it will therefore take place next September, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Then there will be the 9 months of travel. And the arrival on Mars, in June 2023.
What will be his mission once there?
Look for traces of life! Yes, that’s always the goal. We know that Mars was habitable 3 billion years ago. It is known that the planet was covered with rivers, lakes. A model that has just been published even shows that an ocean could have stabilized there. And as on Earth, there is life wherever there is water, we have been looking for decades for clues, traces of past life on Mars – today the planet is become too cold for liquid water to remain on the surface.
There are already three rovers roaming the sands of the Red Planet to study this: NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity. And the Chinese Zhurong rover. Rosalind Franklin will join the small armada. And explore the Martian terrain with drilling nearly 2 meters deep.
The rover’s landing site was chosen specifically for this: it is a basin located near the equator of Mars, which contains deposits of clay, a place where there must have been water.