Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2021 - 22

Perseverance on Mars
But a key difference between MEDA
and its predecessors is that it will also
measure the amount, shape, and size of
dust particles in the Martian atmosphere. Dust is a big consideration for
any surface mission on Mars. It gets all
over everything including spacecraft and
any solar panels they may have. It also
drives chemical processes both on the
surface and in the atmosphere, and it
affects temperature and weather. The
Perseverance team wants to learn more
about these interactions; doing so will
help the team planning operations for
the Ingenuity Mars helicopter as well.
On Earth, the atmosphere - along
with Earth's magnetic field - shields us
from radiation. But there is no global
magnetic field at Mars, so measuring dust
and radiation go hand in hand, especially
for spacesuit design. Radiation is probably
the most extreme condition for the astronauts, so the suits protecting the astronauts from this radiation will be crucial.
To take its measurements, MEDA will
wake itself up each hour, day and night,
whether Perseverance is roving or napping. That will create a nearly constant
stream of information to help fill the gaps

in our knowledge about the Martian
atmosphere.

3D-Printed Metal Parts on Mars
Perseverance is carrying 11 metal
parts made with 3D printing; of those,
five are in the Planetary Instrument for
X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) instrument. PIXL shares space with other tools
in the rotating turret at the end of the
rover's robotic arm. To make the instrument as light as possible, NASA designed
PIXL's two-piece titanium shell, a
mounting frame, and two support struts
that secure the shell to the end of the
arm to be hollow and extremely thin. In
fact, the parts, which were 3D-printed,
have three or four times less mass than if
they'd been produced conventionally.
Perseverance's six other 3D-printed
parts can be found in MOXIE, which
houses six heat exchangers - palmsized nickel-alloy plates that protect key
parts of the instrument from the effects
of high temperatures. While a conventionally machined heat exchanger
would need to be made out of two parts
and welded together, MOXIE's were
each 3D-printed as a single piece.

Space Lasers on Mars
When the Apollo astronauts landed
on the Moon, they brought devices with
them called retroreflectors, which are
essentially small arrays of mirrors. The
plan was for scientists on Earth to aim
lasers at them and calculate the time it
took for the beams to return. This provided exceptionally precise measurements of the Moon's orbit and shape
including how it changed slightly based
on Earth's gravitational pull.
To perform similar experiments on
Mars, Perseverance carries the palmsized Laser Retroreflector Array (LaRA).
While there is currently no laser in the
works for this sort of Mars research, the
device is geared toward the future:
Reflectors like these could one day
enable scientists conducting what is
called laser-ranging research to measure
the position of a rover on the Martian
surface, test Einstein's theory of general
relativity, and help make future landings
on the Red Planet more precise.
For more details on the Mars 2020
mission and the Perseverance rover, visit
https://www.techbriefs.com/component/
content/article/37043.

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Tech Briefs, March 2021

Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2021

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