This week, Metis proudly supported the Jet Propulsion Lab’s historic Mars Rover 2020 program landing activities as a subcontractor to Peraton on the Deep Space Network (DSN) contract at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Perseverance launched on 30 July 2020 and ever since has been cruising through space with the DSN operations team providing critical communication and navigation support to JPL mission control during the successful landing of the Perseverance Rover.
Perseverance was guided by a cruise stage on the 293 million-mile (471 million-kilometer) interplanetary journey. The mission successfully landed on 18 February at 12:55 p.m. inside a 4-mile-wide (7-kilometer) zone inside Jezero Crater, an impact basin scientists believe was flooded with liquid water billions of years ago. From launch to landing our Network Operations Analyst and mission support team provided critical communication support to relay Perseverance’s telemetry to the mission control.
On the successful landing, ground teams at JPL received confirmation re-entry and touchdown though the DSN relay. Metis DSN staff worked diligently to coordinate on every detail of the cruise and landing communication plan, and successfully conducted all elements of their part of this exceptional program.
“We are proud of our team who spent several month planning, preparation, testing, training, briefing, analyzing, and maintaining DSN for this mission especially during the landing phase” said Metis CEO Joy Colucci. “They accomplished this all while working through COVID-related constraints without missing a step.”
For more information, see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/the-mars-relay-network-connects-us-to-nasas-martian-explorers