The Emirates Mars Mission’s Hope Probe, the first Arab mission to Mars, was launched in July 2020 and will be entering orbit on Tuesday at 8:41 a.m. Arizona time. It was designed to study the Martian atmosphere on a global scale to better understand weather, energy circulation and the escape of atmospheric particles from the gravity of Mars.

The Mars 2020 Mission Perseverance rover will be exploring the surface of the planet to search for signs of ancient life and gather samples that could be returned to Earth in a later mission. It was launched in July 2020 and will land on Feb. 18, at 1:55 p.m. Arizona time, at the location of what was once a river delta.

Contributing local scientists from Northern Arizona University and the United States Geological Survey are a small part of the hundreds of individuals internationally who are involved in individual pieces of these large-scale missions that feature some of the latest developments in space exploration.

Christopher Edwards, Hope Probe

Since the Hope Probe launched in the summer, NAU planetary scientist Christopher Edwards has done several test runs of the spectrometer he helped create to ensure it will be ready to start collecting data when the spacecraft settles into its final orbit.

Four times during cruise, Edwards and the team have pointed the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) out into space and taken data for each of the different modes of the instrument. The instrument has been performing twice as well as the mission’s base requirement for it.

In many ways, Edwards said EMIRS is similar to the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) he worked on in the late 1990s for the Mars Global Surveyor, although EMIRS will be able to break up the spectrum of light to about 100 microns, whereas TES was only able to analyze to about 45 microns.

EMIRS, in conjunction with the other two instruments on the probe — a camera and ultraviolet spectrometer — will look at characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, including dust abundance, water vapor and temperatures. Unlike previous orbiters that have been set at a fixed local time, Edwards said this mission will allow scientists to capture data at all local times on Mars within a few days or a week.

“We can really understand the dynamics of the total Martian system from weather to escape processes or the escape rates and what that might tell us about how Mars’ atmosphere evolved over the last several billion years,” he said.

On Tuesday, the spacecraft, traveling at a speed of more than 78,000 kilometers per hour, will begin slowing down enough to be captured by Mars’ orbit. In a few weeks, it will then be shifted from this capture orbit to science orbit, a point a little farther out from the planet’s surface where it can begin making its observations.

“This is a really big milestone for a lot of Mars missions. It’s not easy to get into the Mars orbit. It’s harder to land on the surface, but it’s still not easy to get into orbit, so we’re all pretty excited about this upcoming event,” Edwards said.

Locally, a team of about five NAU students, postdoctoral scholars and other staff will be assisting Edwards with operation of the spectrometer and data analysis.

The mission also allowed American scientists like Edwards to partner with budding planetary scientists from the United Arab Emirates for training and collaboration on various projects. Edwards said many of these “apprentices” were professional engineers or computer scientists who have since pivoted to planetary science. One student trained at NAU and, alongside Edwards’ team, was able to publish a study on Mars’ ancient magnetic field.

“That collaboration has really been at the forefront of this program. It’s not just about the science, it’s also about that camaraderie and building those connections across half the world,” Edwards said. “I would say that I’ve made some great friends and colleagues I think are going to last for the rest of my career and life.”

Robin Fergason, Perseverance rover

For 15 years and after five successfully landed missions to Mars, USGS research geophysicist Robin Fergason has considered herself the bridge between scientists and engineers in her work to verify the safety of spacecraft landing sites.

“The most interesting places geologically are often the most hazardous places from a landing perspective, so we have this push and pull where, as scientists, you want to go someplace where you’re going to be able to answer these really fundamental questions and be able to address these really important scientific ideas. And on the engineering side, we really just want to make sure we land because we’re not doing any science if we don’t land this safely,” Fergason said.

In doing this work, Fergason uses orbiter images to take a close look at surface characteristics including slope and elevation data, how cratered a surface is and the presence of any cliff faces or other rocky surfaces. Any of those features could jeopardize a spacecraft’s landing.

Most recently, she led a four-person team at the USGS to create a mosaic map of Jezero Crater, the landing site for the Perseverance rover, which was then used by another team of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, to create a completely new landing system, called Terrain Relative Navigation, needed to steer the spacecraft to a safe landing spot in otherwise dangerous terrain.

Locally, Fergason and colleagues Trent Hare, Donna Galuszka, David Mayer and Bonnie Redding all contributed to the map, which Fergason confidently calls the most precise map of Mars to date, created by stitching together using orbital images of Mars. Although the team only used a handful of images for the map, Fergason said, when aligned with “near-perfect accuracy,” this was plenty.

The USGS map was loaded onto the spacecraft as "truth" images that the lander will compare with real-time images it takes as it approaches the ground to autonomously avoid any hazards, such as the steep areas of Jezero Crater that are unsuitable for landing.

Fergason said after nearly three years of work on the landing site map, and efforts from the engineers at JPL, she is completely confident the upcoming landing will be completed safely, demonstrating the potential for Terrain Relative Navigation. She noted that even if Perseverance used the technology from the previous Curiosity rover, which landed in 2012, it would not be able to land in this crater.

“This landing system is allowing us to land in places that are more geologically complex than we’ve ever been able to land before because we have the technology to avoid those hazards. From a scientific perspective, that may provide us the most interesting and valuable data and information,” Fergason said.

Ken Herkenhoff, Perseverance rover

In the latest of a long list of rover cameras USGS research geologist Ken Herkenhoff has helped design and operate, Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z will have a long-awaited yet familiar function: zoom.

He said zoom function was originally proposed for the Curiosity rover, but the team had troubles getting it to work in Martian temperatures.

“Because they’re mounted on the mast, they’re kind of hanging out in the breeze. They get very cold at night and warm up in the day. That big range of temperatures is larger than we see on Earth and is very hard to design for; to make it work at those low temperatures is a challenge,” Herkenhoff said.

Mastcam-Z was designed to take high-definition images and videos of the Martian surface, including signs of water and ancient life. According to a NASA description, it can look around in a full 360 degrees and, using its zoom, can see features as small as a house fly from a distance about the length of a soccer field.

“The ability to zoom and change the focal length like you can with a digital commercial camera is going to be really powerful and give us a lot more flexibility in identifying the rocks, soil and other targets that deserve a closer look by the other instruments on Perseverance,” Herkenhoff said.

In the days after the rover lands, those who will be operating it will shift their schedules to align with Mars time, where the days are about 40 minutes longer than Earth days. In the past, scientists would gather in Los Angeles and live on Mars time together as they worked at JPL, but in response to the pandemic, most of the team, including Herkenhoff, will be participating from home.

“I used to live in LA and during the Mars Pathfinder mission. I had young kids and they’d didn’t understand why I was sleeping all day, so it was tough on them and tough on me. It’s going to be a challenge for a lot of people this time around,” Herkenhoff said.

Though he has participated in several previous Mars missions starting with Pathfinder, Herkenhoff said he still experiences the “seven minutes of terror” it takes for the spacecraft to land itself. Engineers cannot pilot the landing because of the time it takes for radio signals to travel to Mars, so they just have to watch and hope their extensive planning worked.

Nevertheless, Herkenhoff said the terror will be worthwhile because Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to Mars and will be able to collect, seal and cache samples for an eventual return to Earth.

“It has been kind of the holy grail of the Mars science community for decades,” Herkenhoff said of being able to bring samples back to Earth. “It’s much harder to try to analyze samples on Mars. We just can’t send a laboratory full of equipment, so bringing the samples back is going to be a huge boon for Mars science and hopefully Perseverance will be the first step toward that goal.”

Ryan Anderson, Perseverance rover

Much like Mastcam-Z, the SuperCam team, including USGS physical scientist Ryan Anderson, is looking forward to testing new features with Perseverance.

SuperCam is an updated version of ChemCam, one of the instruments on the Curiosity rover that functions by firing a laser at rock samples and then using a spectrometer to analyze the chemistry of those materials. The newer camera will use the same technique to be able to analyze not only chemistry, but also minerology.

“Chemistry only gives you part of the picture. If you have the chemistry and the minerology, suddenly you can really nail down what you’re seeing in the rock,” Anderson said, explaining that scientists have been hoping to combine these two analyses almost since the technology was invented. “Being able to use all these techniques on the same target quickly with SuperCam will give us a really great starting point for understanding samples and understanding the geology of the area where the samples are collected.”

Anderson said these short-range instrument are great for scouting: they can tell researchers more about the geology of Mars than a camera can, but are faster and simpler to use than devices on the arm of the rover. Speed will be key for this mission, where Perseverance needs to cover more ground more quickly than previous rovers.

“It should be interesting, it should be a fun challenge for us. It really highlights the tension between scientists who want to dig in deep and understand everything they see and the bigger-picture needs of the mission. In terms of the mission, we’ve got to keep going, we should take a closer look, but we’ve got the data we’ve got and we have to move on,” Anderson said.

Once the rover is situated, Anderson’s role will be to analyze the light created by SuperCam’s laser spark to determine the composition of different samples. He will not be living on Mars time for this mission, though, due to SuperCam’s international team members, who as the Martian clock advances will switch trade duties so people can work primarily during their daytime hours.

Like Herkenhoff, Anderson is looking forward to the immediate data from the rover as well as its future potential, pointing to how scientists continue to learn things from the lunar samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts.

“Once we have them back to Earth, we can throw everything we’ve got at them and we can invent new things over time,” he said.