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  • Hii my name is Michelle Colizzi. I just

  • finished building a spacecraft that's going to Mars.

  • This is Ask NASA and I'm here to answer your questions.

  • As humans we're naturally curious right? We're natural born explorers it's

  • in our curiosity that we want to explore outside of Earth and explore Mars,

  • understand what type of resources they have,

  • can it sustain human life. Personally my biggest worry is just making sure that

  • the pieces that I designed and i worked on work.

  • We've gone through extensive testing and it's become your child and you just want

  • to see it do its best when it gets to to perform on the surface of Mars.

  • So there are a lot of really cool instruments on board the Perseverance

  • rover. One in particular that happens to be my

  • favorite is MOXIE. and the purpose of MOXIE is to try to

  • take some of the Mars atmosphere and convert that into oxygen and the

  • oxygen - the pure oxygen - can be used to generate fuel for a return flight

  • home in the future from Mars, or could also be utilized for humans

  • breathing air when we do have manned missions.

  • I think the biggest challenge is making sure that you're

  • setting up your tests to represent the environments that they're

  • going to see. There's a very large temperature gradient

  • from the floor up to the top of the rover. We have a chamber that simulates

  • the heat and the radiation from the Sun so we need to make sure that all the

  • hardware and components that are on there

  • can withstand a wide range of temperatures. We get

  • wind on Mars which blows up dust so we veered away

  • from solar panels to power the rover. And the atmosphere that we'll see

  • on the journey to and on another planet are very important.

  • I joined the ATLO team which is assembly test and launch operations

  • and that's where all the piece parts of the hardware that all the individual

  • engineers have designed built and tested come together. And we as the ATLO team

  • put all those pieces together to build the spacecraft. I was responsible for

  • building the aeroshell, and the aeroshell consists of a back

  • shell on the top and a heat shield on the bottom and

  • that's the capsule that the rover and the descent stage sit

  • inside.

  • The Ingenuity is mainly a proof of concept to test new technology on the

  • surface of Mars, right, we've never flown anything on

  • another planet before, so this will be the first

  • time that we do. And it's also going to give us some really cool aerial

  • shots from up above and allow us to see the terrain ahead

  • for the Perseverance rover. So the Ingenuity helicopter

  • is actually stored at the bottom of the rover underneath,

  • we have what's called a belly pan that ejects with pyrotechnic devices

  • to then allow the helicopter to drop onto the surface and stand up once the

  • rover drives away. And then it'll take flight from there

  • So they're more like robot brothers, but they serve

  • - they're both stationed on two totally different

  • locations on the surface of Mars and as slow as they go,

  • i don't think it's very likely that they'll ever meet up.

  • But they both have very important but different

  • jobs to do on the surface of Mars. So Perseverance has

  • this really cool robotic arm and at the the end of the robotic arm it has a

  • drill and a bunch of different drill bits, so

  • based on the type of dirt or rock that we want to

  • to take samples of, it selects the right bit.

  • And then it starts drilling these these samples that will be,

  • we call them core samples. So they're these little slender

  • core samples from the dirt that get put

  • into a test tube looking metallic tube, and then sealed airtight

  • so that we can preserve the sample for when we do come and pick them back

  • up. I think the name Perseverance has been very suiting

  • and has been - has hit really close to home for me,

  • because everyone who worked on it did have to persevere

  • in order to make this mission a reality. This year there's support from

  • other countries who help build instruments,

  • from colleges from we have interns and co-ops we have scientists we have

  • engineers. I mean there's so many people who come together

  • to make a mission like this happen. I'm honored to be a part of this team

  • who have built something absolutely amazing,

  • and that's traveling to another planet. Like how cool is that?

  • Do you have a question for NASA? Send your questions to our experts

  • using #AskNASA.

Hii my name is Michelle Colizzi. I just

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