Is there life on Mars?(6)

As did Curiosity, Perseverance will rely on an autopilot to guide it through the atmosphere to the planet’s surface, after arriving at a velocity, relative to its target, of 19,500km per hour. “We refer to it as the seven minutes of terror,” says Matt Wallace, an engineer who is the mission’s deputy project manager. The rover’s autonomy will then carry over to its everyday operations. Because of the time it takes radio waves to travel from Earth to Mars, Perseverance will receive instructions from its controllers only once a day. On the ground in Mars it will need to find and avoid awkwardly placed rocks, and also more serious hazards, such as cliffs, by processing, in real time, pictures coming from its dozens of cameras. This autonomy, NASA is confident, will permit the new rover to cross the Martian surface routinely and safely at a speed of around 150 metres per hour, double that at which Curiosity is usually allowed to travel.

As well as eyes, Perseverance has ears. A pair of microphones on board will permit people to hear the winds of Mars for the first time. They will also be able listen to the whirr of the rover’s gears, the crunch of its wheels as it moves across the regolith (the crushed rock that passes for soil on Mars) and the percussive sounds of the drill at the end of its arm as it chips out samples of rocks to study.