IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — Millions of miles away on the surface of Mars, a rover named Curiosity continues to work hard surveying the Martian landscape.
Soon though, a new rover named Perseverance - with roots right here in Idaho - will join Curiosity on Mars.
Kelly Lively, an Idaho National Laboratory Department Manager for Radio Isotope Power Systems, worked on a part of Perseverance with her team.
"This mission goes back to Mars and will actually go to a different location, Jezero crater, and collect rock samples along the way and cache them in stainless steel tubes," she said.
Lively and her team at the INL worked on a component of the rover called the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG, which uses pellet forms of the radioactive material plutonium-238 to generate electricity.
"It generates about 125 watts of electrical power and it actually charges an ion lithium battery that is onboard the rover," she said. "The ion lithium battery is what provides enough power at the right current to be able to power all the instruments and mobility of the platform."
The team has been working on the MMRTG generator for five years, and Lively says that throughout the project it would sometimes just hit her that a piece of Idaho was destined to end up living on Mars.
"I've been fortunate that nobody has duct-taped me to the rocket and sent me along to Mars with it," she joked. "But yeah, it's just amazing: Millions of miles away and during these times of COVID, it's challenging just to go to a different state, no less to Mars."
Lively added that the COVID-19 pandemic had threatened to derail the Perseverance project's timeline.
"NASA had to get federal approval to be able to continue with the missions. So, any delay in the launch would have caused a two-year delay in us being able to launch again - that would be the next window," she said.
But teams across the U.S. were up to the challenge and sure enough, in July, the launch was on, blasting Perseverance into space on an eight-month flight. It's expected to touch down on the red planet Thursday - but isn't quite there yet.
"It is upside down inside the spacecraft, and it's traveling at I believe around 36,000 miles per hour, if you can even imagine how fast that is," Lively said.
She added that she feels honored to be a part of the Perseverance's journey into the solar system, and urged anyone inspired by the rover's mission to pursue their own passions.
"I was a late academic bloomer, so I waited 10 years before I went to college and oh man, looking back, thank goodness I did," she said. "Just to be a little part of this history, and working in such a great field with such great people and wow, out of this world missions."
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