{"id":17656,"date":"2020-07-30T01:35:08","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T17:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-mission-serves-as-ultimate-test-for-working-from-home-planet\/"},"modified":"2020-07-30T01:35:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T17:35:08","slug":"nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-mission-serves-as-ultimate-test-for-working-from-home-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-mission-serves-as-ultimate-test-for-working-from-home-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover mission serves as ultimate test for working from home (planet)"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_576361\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-576361\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-576361\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200722-persev-630x353.png\" alt=\"Mars Perseverance rover\" width=\"630\" height=\"353\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200722-persev-630x353.png 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200722-persev-1260x706.png 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200722-persev-768x430.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200722-persev-1536x860.png 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200722-persev.png 1573w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-576361\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover using the PIXL X-ray instrument to analyze rock on Mars. (NASA \/ JPL Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The launch of NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover marks the start of a seven-month-long journey involving tens of millions of miles of travel \u2014 but it also marks the end of an eight-year-long journey involving millions of miles of travel on the part of scientists and engineers across the country.<\/p>\n<p>And perhaps the biggest marvel is that, in the end, most of them got the rover and its scientific instruments ready for launch while working from home.<\/p>\n<p>Working from home has been a tough thing to manage for many of the businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic and social-distancing restrictions. It\u2019s been tough for NASA as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPutting a spacecraft together that\u2019s going to Mars, and not making a mistake \u2014 it\u2019s hard, no matter what. Trying to do it during the middle of a pandemic, it\u2019s a lot harder,\u201d Matt Wallace, the mission\u2019s deputy project manager at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said during a pre-launch briefing.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>Previously:<\/strong> Perseverance rover will go to Mars with a monument to COVID-19 medical teams<\/h4>\n<p>Fortunately, NASA and its partners could draw upon decades\u2019 worth of experience in remote operations. \u201cWhen the pandemic came along, it didn\u2019t make that much difference in the way I operate, because I was already used to working remotely with JPL,\u201d said the University of Washington\u2019s Tim Elam, who\u2019s part of the science team for the rover\u2019s X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.<\/p>\n<p>Once the rover is on its way, working remotely will become even more routine. \u201cPasadena is about the same distance away from Mars that Seattle is,\u201d Elam joked.<\/p>\n<p>A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket could send the rover on its way from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as soon as Thursday: Liftoff is scheduled for 7:50 a.m. ET (4:50 a.m. PT), and forecasters say there\u2019s an 80% chance of acceptable weather. You can watch NASA\u2019s live video coverage of the countdown starting at 7 a.m. ET (4 a.m. PT) Thursday:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Watch NASA's Perseverance Rover Launch to Mars!\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JIB3JbIIbPU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The 1-ton, six-wheeled rover is due to land next February inside Mars\u2019 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater, at the site of an ancient river delta that now appears bone-dry. The top three tasks on the $2.4 billion mission\u2019s to-do list are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Identify the places most likely to hold the mineral and chemical traces of past microbial life.<\/li>\n<li>Extract and store the most promising samples of soil and rock for return to Earth, inside a probe that\u2019s yet to be built.<\/li>\n<li>Test devices that could be used for future robotic and human missions to Mars, including the first helicopter to fly on another world and an experiment designed to convert the carbon dioxide in Mars\u2019 thin atmosphere into oxygen.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, support staff and students have been working to get Perseverance ready for this trip to Mars, including hundreds in the Seattle area. Here are four case studies, focusing on Mars mission veterans as well as a first-timer.<\/p>\n<h4>Aerojet Rocketdyne: Building on 52 years of rocketry in Redmond<\/h4>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tXq16lgMTo8<\/p>\n<p>Aerojet Rocketdyne\u2019s propulsion systems have flown aboard every successful NASA mission to Mars, and this time around, Aerojet\u2019s involved in virtually every phase of Perseverance\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n<p>The company is providing four solid rocket motors to give ULA\u2019s Atlas 5 rocket an extra boost, plus the main engine and 12 reaction control system thrusters for the Atlas\u2019 Centaur upper stage. Aerojet also built eight stabilizing thrusters for Perseverance\u2019s spacecraft, eight more thrusters for the descent stage, and the plutonium-fueled power source for the rover.<\/p>\n<p>All of the 28 thrusters on the list were manufactured and tested at Aerojet\u2019s facility in Redmond, Wash., which has been in operation since 1968. \u201cThat history goes back to the Boeing spin-off engineers who formed the company originally as Rocket Research Company, with the desire to focus on space production,\u201d said Fred Wilson, Aerojet\u2019s director of marketing and business development in Redmond.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the work for the Perseverance rover was done long before the pandemic hit, but Aerojet is currently in the midst of preparations for future missions to Mars as well as to the moon. Wilson said about two-thirds of the Redmond workforce is working from home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody who doesn\u2019t have to be directly involved in working on the hardware is working from home,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we have been able to maintain a high level of operational efficiency. \u2026 Our on-time delivery performance for the year is 92% out of the Redmond site.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wilson said not one of Aerojet\u2019s Redmond employees has tested positive for COVID-19. \u201cSo, knock on wood, it\u2019s been a very good success story for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<h4>Western\u2019s Melissa Rice: Choosing the colors for Mars\u2019 zoom camera<\/h4>\n<figure id=\"attachment_576392\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-576392\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-576392\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200727-melissa-rice-630x521.jpg\" alt=\"Melissa Rice\" width=\"630\" height=\"521\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200727-melissa-rice-630x521.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200727-melissa-rice-768x636.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/200727-melissa-rice.jpg 1230w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-576392\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Melissa Rice, a planetary scientist at Western Washington University, stands alongside a Curiosity testbed rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u2019s \u201cMars Yard.\u201d (NASA \/ JPL Photo via WWU)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Perseverance is the third Mars rover for Melissa Rice, a planetary scientist at Western Washington University. And the fact that she\u2019s based in Bellingham, Wash., more than 1,200 miles from Pasadena, means she\u2019s had plenty of experience with working remotely.<\/p>\n<p>It all started when she was a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech and JPL, where she worked on the Opportunity and Curiosity missions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause the whole mission is so well set up for remote operations, often the science team would be calling in to our meetings from their various offices at JPL, rather than being in the physical room together, just because we have that teleconferencing capability set up so well,\u201d Rice recalled. \u201cSo, when I left JPL and started my position here at Western Washington in Bellingham, it took quite a while for some of my colleagues to realize that I wasn\u2019t just down the hall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That familiarity with remote operations has come in handy for dealing with the pandemic. \u201cWe\u2019ve had lots of practice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Rice\u2019s team works on the rover\u2019s Mastcam-Z imaging system, which is destined to become the first set of zoom cameras on the Red Planet. The system can capture wide-angle or high-resolution 3-D pictures and video in a variety of wavelengths to help scientists determine the mineral composition of Perseverance\u2019s surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy specific role on the camera team has been selecting the wavelengths that we\u2019ll use to look for hydration on the surface,\u201d Rice explained. \u201cThis will be the first time that we have a rover whose eyes are specifically tuned to the absorption features due to water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her one big regret is that she and her students had to call off a trip to Florida to witness the launch, due to the pandemic. \u201cThat\u2019s unfortunate, more so for the students than for me,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I think seeing the launch live can be a life-changing experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>First Mode: Designing a fake rover \u2014 and protecting the real one<\/h4>\n<figure id=\"attachment_512633\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-512633\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-512633\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/190729-voorhees-630x440.jpg\" alt=\"First Mode's Chris Voorhees\" width=\"630\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/190729-voorhees-630x440.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/190729-voorhees-768x536.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/190729-voorhees-1260x879.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-512633\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">First Mode\u2019s president and chief engineer, Chris Voorhees, shows off the employee-owned company\u2019s digs near Seattle\u2019s Pike Place Market. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Perseverance provided a Seattle startup called First Mode with its first contract.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first activity that we did was to support the Perseverance rover, specifically its physical assembly and integration,\u201d said Chris Voorhees, the company\u2019s president and chief engineer.<\/p>\n<p>When First Mode was founded in 2018, many of its 11 employees were alumni of JPL as well as Planetary Resources, a Redmond-based asteroid mining venture that fell upon hard times. Now the engineering firm is prospering, with a workforce of more than 50 employees.<\/p>\n<p>First Mode\u2019s engineers designed a rover surrogate, nicknamed the \u201cFaux-ver,\u201d which was used to simulate the real rover\u2019s mass and thermal characteristics during the development and testing of spacecraft hardware.<\/p>\n<p>Now engineers from First Mode are part of the team that\u2019s planning Perseverance\u2019s atmospheric entry, descent and landing on Mars \u2014 a key phase of the mission that\u2019s known as EDL or the \u201cseven minutes of terror.\u201d In the months ahead, they\u2019ll be supporting operational readiness tests aimed at making absolutely sure that nothing will go wrong. Or if something does go wrong, that there\u2019s a backup plan for saving the mission.<\/p>\n<p>Because of the pandemic, those tests will have to be run in remote mode. \u201cThat\u2019s a real challenge, not just for us, but for the team in general, \u201d Voorhees said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat you really want is to have everybody in the room, but if you can\u2019t have everybody in a room, how do you best represent that?\u201d he said. \u201cThat team is working through the challenges of that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>UW\u2019s Tim Elam: \u2018Chief spectroscopist\u2019 for Perseverance\u2019s X-ray eyes<\/h4>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"PIXL on Mars 2020 Mission\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8k7zBKd_nXY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the first Mars rodeo for the University of Washington\u2019s Tim Elam.<\/p>\n<p>Elam built his career as an expert on X-ray fluorescence at UW\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory. So when scientists and engineers were brought onto the team for Perseverance\u2019s Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, or PIXL, Elam was a natural addition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the rovers so far have and an X-ray-based instrument that measured the elemental composition of the rocks,\u201d Elam said. \u201cWhat\u2019s new about PIXL is that it measures that not over a fairly broad area of a couple of centimeters, but in a very tiny spot. It\u2019s about 100 microns.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Spot-by-spot readings from PIXL\u2019s X-ray fluorescence spectrometer will be assembled and matched up with images of areas the size of postage stamps to get a sense of detailed variations in physical structure and chemical composition.<\/p>\n<p>The scale is such that scientists could arguably make out the fossilized remnants of Martian microbes. But even if ancient life isn\u2019t definitively discovered, the data from PIXL \u2014 and from a complementary instrument called SHERLOC \u2014 will help scientists decide which rock samples are most worth bringing back to Earth for further study.<\/p>\n<p>Elam helps bridge the gap between the engineers in charge of designing the instrument and the scientists in charge of looking for just the right kind of rock. \u201cI don\u2019t have an official title, but I like to think of myself as the chief spectroscopist,\u201d he said in a video.<\/p>\n<p>During a Zoom interview, Elam said he missed being able to meet up with the rest of his team in Pasadena. \u201cWe\u2019ve learned to get better at doing it remotely, and the ability to have tools that involve video and simultaneous audio, just like we\u2019re having now, makes a big difference,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I still miss those interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He and his family had been planning to travel to Florida for the launch, but like Rice, they had to call off the trip due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy family has been following this just as much as I have. They\u2019re interested in space, and they want to see what happens,\u201d Elam said. \u201cSo I would say there\u2019s a pretty good chance that this household is going to be awake at 4 a.m. on the day of the launch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Live coverage of the countdown via NASA and United Launch Alliance is due to begin at 4 a.m. PT (7 a.m. ET) Thursday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover using the PIXL X-ray instrument to analyze rock on Mars. (NASA \/ JPL Illustration) The launch of NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover marks the start of a seven-month-long journey involving tens of millions of miles of travel \u2014 but it also marks the end of an eight-year-long journey involving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4704,864,4689,367,190,4706,4368,4752],"class_list":["post-17656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2020-mars-rover","tag-aerojet-rocketdyne","tag-first-mode","tag-mars","tag-nasa","tag-perseverance-rover","tag-university-of-washington","tag-western-washington-university"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}