âPerseverance will get you anywhereâ â and after a journey of seven months, 300 million miles and a nerve-racking seven-minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere, NASAâs Perseverance rover landed safely in Jezero Crater last Thursday (Feb. 18). And, just like with the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars in 2012, °”TV is part of the Perseverance mission, too. Deploying the parachute, firing retrorockets to slow the spacecraft and lowering Perseverance to the Mars surface all relied on small explosive charges. NASAâs engineers had to be certain that these systems would perform correctly. To do that, they turned to °”TVâ McClellan Nuclear Research Center, one of only two facilities in the United States able to image these critical components using neutron radiography.
Similar to an X-ray, neutron radiography allows researchers to âseeâ inside objects without damaging them. Unlike X-rays, neutrons pass through heavy elements and can resolve lighter elements such as hydrogen and carbon. Using this method, the McClellan Nuclear Research Center can image objects from less than a centimeter in size to the size of an aircraft wing. Over the past four years, the center has supported development and final flight readiness for the Mars 2020 Mission by nondestructive testing of mission critical components with neutron radiography. âThe staff at °”TV Office of Research and McClellan Nuclear Research Center were all pleased to see that all went according to plan with the successful February 18th landing,â said Prasant Mohapatra, vice chancellor of the Office of Research, which oversees the facility. âWeâre delighted to have played a role in this historic mission.â
Alumni Involvement
NASA Chief Engineer Adam Steltzner â90 designed the âsky craneâ landing system first used for Curiosity and now again for Perseverance. Jessica Samuels â99 is systems engineer at NASAâs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and surface systems and mission manager for the Mars 2020 Mission. Sara Langberg â16, who studied with Professor Stephen Robinson â78, is a development engineer on the carried aboard the rover. Professor Dawn Sumner, chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is a member of the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) team. She helped select the landing site in Gale Crater and has been closely involved in Curiosity operations as the rover has searched for signs of water and past life.