It may sound completely crazy that our amazing detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful partner Dr. Watson has set off on a mission to Mars, but that’s allmost true. The transport, on the other hand, does not take place in the usual horse-drawn carriage, but in a high-tech satellite called Perseverance, which was launched with an Atlas V-541 rocket.
The landing on Mars is scheduled for Thursday 18. of February this year and takes place almost 7 months after the travel started with a liftoff last year on July the 30.
SHERLOC (without K), an instrument located at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, is intended to find grains of sand in Mars rocks that contain minerals and organic molecules, which are the carbon-based building blocks of life on Earth. SHERLOC is working with WATSON, a camera that will take close-ups of the rock structures.
When it finds something very interesting, the Perseverance team will order the rover to take 1.27 cm wide core samples, store and seal them in metal tubes. The samples will be deposited on the surface of Mars so that a future mission can pick them up and return them to Earth for more detailed study.
At Straagaarden Nyord we will of course follow this mission and maybe we can see the landing in our telescopes – who knows 😊 – if you want to join, book your evening here.
With Dark Sky greetings
Straagaarden Nyord