Season 2 Episode 010:
Perseverance & Ingenuity: The Mission to Mars
with Rob Sullivan
Perseverance and Ingenuity. Sometimes it’s all about alignment. It just so happens that this planetary alignment happened in the middle of a global pandemic. Mars reached opposition in October 2020, a “mere” 38.6 million miles away from Earth. A rare opportunity to launch a rover seeking signs of ancient life to collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for a possible return to Earth. So, the many scientists and engineers involved in the Mars 2020 Mission persevered, finding ways to continue their innovative work and successfully launch the Perseverance Rover on July 30, 2020.
On February 18, 2021, it landed. Now, more than 144 million miles away, this amazing technology is sending back incredible images of the red planet. Next up, the Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, will test powered flight on another world for the first time.
This week we’re talking about this spectacular accomplishment, one that sparks the imagination about humankind’s capacity for perseverance and ingenuity, with Rob Sullivan, Principal Research Scientist at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, and Co-Investigator with Mastcam-Z and MEDA on the Mars 2020 mission.
