NASA is one year away from launching its rover on a trip to Mars. Its launch is programmed to be on July 17th, 2020, and it is presumed to land on the Red Planet on February 18th, 2021, in Jezero crater. Mars 2020 rover will explore the Martian environment, along with its topography and geological processes from the surface of the planet.
Furthermore, it will examine whether sustainable life on the planet can be possible. Because it does not have an official name yet, the Mars 2020 rover will receive its name after a student naming contest planned to happen in autumn.
The SuperCam Mast Unit Mounted on Mars 2020
The design of the rover was reproduced after the Curiosity rover and is supposed to utilize a multitude of components which are by now manufactured and verified, such as a variety of scientific instruments and a core drill.
Among the scientific instruments is the SuperCam Mast Unit. Composed of a camera, two lasers, and four spectrometers, the SuperCam was designed to pinpoint and analyze the rocks and ground of Mars, being able to identify tiny things from a considerable distance. What researchers at NASA hope to find is evidence that life was once prosperous on the Red Planet.
Development manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Soren Madsen discloses that “SuperCam’s rock-zapping laser allows scientists to analyze the chemical composition of its targets.” SuperCam is the new version of Curiosity’s efficacious ChemCam and was set up on Mars 2020 rover this month.
NASA’s Plans For The Future With Mars 2020
The reason the National Aeronautics and Space Administration emphasizes so much the importance of space exploration, and it creates so many human and robot missions into space, more specifically on the Moon and on Mars, is that they want to lay the groundwork for the human exploration of Mars. They are planning on creating a constant human presence on the planet by 2028, and Mars 2020 rover is paving the way towards that.
