at the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse, you can approach the robots present on Mars
At the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse, a reconstructed outdoor Martian terrain features four robots out of the seven currently present on the red planet. The opportunity to talk about the latest scientific research attributed to these mobile devices.
What are the mobile robots on Mars? Where are they ? What are they doing ? And what do they look like? In the form of a scientific show, the City of Space in Toulouse answers all these questions in a new outdoor animation presented to the public. Unique in the world, the presentation of four of the seven rovers currently on Mars. Full-size motors are motorized and reproduced with impressive attention to detail. They evolve in a setting where”the color, the texture, the size of the relief have been reproduced with the help of astronomers and geologists, specialists in Mars“explains Christophe Chaffardon, director of science, education and culture at the Cité de l’espace.
Display scientist
To Hollywood music, in this ocher and red decor, at the foot of the cliff of Mont Roucou, successively make their entrance Zhurongthe Chinese robot arrived in mid-May 2021 on Mars then Perseverance, the NASA robot at work since February 2021. The size of a car, the latter is in search of traces of past life on the red planet. Its replica has the articulated arm at the end ordered is a tool “100% Toulouse“, the Supercam designed by the engineers and scientists of IRAP, the research institute in astrophysics and planetology. “With this arm and a laser shot that it performs from a distance, Perseverance is able to analyze the nature of Martian rocks, then coring them and setting them aside for later recovery.“explains Christophe Chaffardon. The future sample return mission is planned within a decade.
By its size, that of a car, Perseverance impresses. Especially since at its side, the city presents Sojourner, the first American mobile robot, that of the Pathfinder mission of 1997, the size of a shoebox.
Roll and fly on Mars
A rare departure from reality, the piloting of the machines carried out by the scientific mediators is done via a tablet. On Mars, communications with Earth take at least eight minutes. On Zhurong’s solar panels, red dust. A detail that owes nothing to chance: “The atmosphere of Mars, even if it is very light, raises sand and dust and it is a real nightmare for scientists because the winds, seven times less powerful on Mars, do not remove the sand“explains Simon Pujol. Unbeatable and passionate, the scientific mediator also tells the specificity of the movement of the Chinese rover. “The big innovation of the Chinese is to have created six steering wheels, which makes crabbing possible“he adds demonstration in support.
Among the other recent innovations of the Martian scientific community, the flight of a small helicopter. A NASA team has indeed imagined flying a drone in the very thin atmosphere of Mars Ingenuity. “It was the first time a craft had flown through the atmosphere of a planet other than Earth.“Christophe Chaffardon is enthusiastic about who”the machine foreshadows the future because it will be possible to explore other planets and their satellites by air“. To measure the feat of Ingenuity, author of dozens of flights on the red planet, the Cité de l’Espace team shows a model helicopter toy. What to realize how the craziest projects are born because the lift of the Martian air has of course nothing to do with that of the earth.
Toulouse expertise
Thanks to the proximity of scientific laboratories in the Toulouse region, we are with this Martian terrain at the heart of current research. Because it’s a few kilometers away, National Center for Space Studies that Perseverance is piloted jointly and alternately with the NASA laboratory at Los Alamos. Supercam’s laser has exceeded one million shots and the traces left on the surface of the rocks are reproduced on the reconstructed Martian terrain artifact. An attention to detail that can be found by discovering on the cap of Perseverance a small crest that combines a caduceus and the representation of take-off from Florida. “On a reproduction of this very touching gesture by NASA teams who wanted to pay tribute to the medical personnel around the world who have fought against the pandemic. points out Olivier Sanguy, editor-in-chief of the Cité de l’Espace news site. In addition to scientific history, “it is the human story that is told there” he concludes, the one that continues to make people dream.