Are we alone? UCPH researchers hold their breath ahead of Mars landing

If all goes as planned, NASA's space vehicle Perseverance will touchdown on Mars Thursday night in the agency’s most ambitious mission to date. The mission's primary task is to look for traces of life and in doing so, address one of the most fundamental questions in human history: Are we alone?

"The ultimate goal is to find traces of microscopic life that may have been present on Mars early in the planet's history. If there was ever life on Mars, there's a good chance that the samples from this mission will let us know. This is an extraordinarily exciting time," says Morten Bo Madsen, a physicist and associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute.

Together with other researchers and technicians from the University of Copenhagen, Morten Bo Madsen has contributed to several of the rover’s instruments which make this mission possible.

An important part of the rover's eyes

The rover will collect a series of samples from Mars' surface. These samples will be brought back to Earth during a follow-up mission. Upon their return, detailed analyses of these samples will reveal traces of past life, as well as bring a wealth of other knowledge about Mars, and planetary evolution more generally.

To assist with reconnaissance and selecting where the samples will be gathered and to document the sampling, the rover will use, among other things, a stereo imagery camera called the Mastcam-Z, as well as the SuperCam, a laser-based instrument that can determine the elemental composition of sand, rocks and cliffs.

The Mastcam-Z camera and SuperCam both require unique calibration devices that allow for the adjustment of color balance, so that the color characteristics of the surface can be separated from the lighting (in both infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light).

"The atmospheric conditions on Mars are constantly changing. For example, there could be a lot of red dust in the air, a factor that the rover’s cameras need to take into account when taking pictures. This is why we’ve developed color references that the cameras that allow them to be adjusted, in order for images to be used for comparison and analysis," explains physicist and associate professor Kjartan Kinch of the Niels Bohr Institute.

Will drive around Mars

University of Copenhagen researchers will be directly involved in the operational work of steering the rover around Mars in its quest for traces of life. On the Danish end of things, physicist Jens Frydenvang of the University of Copenhagen’s Globe Institute is leading the work.

"We play a significant role in the mission and will help to determine and plan which areas will be scouted by the rover and analyse the data that we continuously receive," explains Frydenvang, who has hundreds of hours of space mission experience behind him.

The specimens collected by Perseverance are expected to be back on Earth for further study in the early 2030s—an effort that the university's researchers also hope to contribute to.

"The samples gathered from this mission, and the opportunity to have them examined by the best labs in the world, is probably our first opportunity to definitively answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe," says Jens Frydenvang.

Perseverance is expected to land on Mars Thursday night, February 18, just before 10 p.m.