Vikings I and II, Pathfinder and Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Phoenix, Curiosity, Insight, and Ingenuity — a true honor roll of robotic exploration and landers on Mars.

These spacecraft are all members of the extended landing party on Mars, since every one exceeded it’s “engineering warranty” — on Mars.

What does that mean? Every spacecraft is rated by the designing engineers on an “expected lifetime” — how long should the robot be able to work on Mars, assuming a successful landing and instrument deployment.

For example, Curiosity was supposed to work for one Martian year-roughly 687 Earth days. It’s still exploring more than four times its engineering warranty.

But Opportunity is the standard by which all Mars missions are measured: 5,110 sols; more than 57 times longer than the engineering warranty of 90 Sols .

We’ll now turn to the robots working on Mars at present.

Let’s begin with that overachieving helicopter, Ingenuity. Twenty flights and almost three miles flown in the super thin air over Mars. The engineering guarantee was 30 sols, or five flights; whichever came first.

Ingenuity has been flying now for 380 sols-and counting.

Perseverance, however, has some work to do. The design engineers give Perseverance a two-Martian-year warranty, as all systems aboard are functioning nominally — that’s NASA-speak for performing normally — so far, Perseverance has a while to go yet, about 1,500 Mars sols.

However, Perseverance has already shattered several Mars driving and performance records:

— Furthest autonomous drive on Mars — sorry about that, Opportunity — over 800 feet (245 meters).

— First Oxygen produced from Martian atmosphere.

— First descent stage complete camera captures.

— First six samples collected for future Earth lab examination.

— First ground-penetrating radar use at surface.

— Fastest to reach 100.000 raw images.

— First robot pair assembled and launched in the midst of a pandemic.

So what do we know that we didn’t a year ago?

There are organic molecules in some of the rock samples from Jezero crater as well as the samples previously gathered by Opportunity and Curiosity. There is mounting evidence that the bedrock on the crater floor is magma-an igneous pool that hardened underground. The subsurface bedrock has a 30-degree tilt relative to the crater floor.

We all look forward to even more spectacular scenery and science when the rover reaches the delta. Deltas form when faster moving river water runs into a slower-moving body of water, such as a lake. The sediment that the river carries downstream settles on the floor of the lake, and over millions of years, forms a substantial layer, called a delta. Some of the richest fossil deposits on Earth come from river deltas that turned into stone. Of course, finding a Martian shark tooth would be great, but Perseverance is more likely to find biosignatures of microscopic Martians.

How can you get involved in this mission?

There are at least three ways:

1. Become a raw image initial viewer. I’ve been telling my students in North Carolina that as long as they see the images before 11 a.m. they are seeing them before the mission team gets to work 8 a.m. Pacific, which corresponds to 11 a.m. Eastern time.

2. Nominate a middle-school aged student who has been through a serious struggle, but has persevered anyway. The form is located at https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/got-perseverance/. The reward for that student, if selected, will be interviewed by the rover’s mission operations team; along with numerous other things from NASA.

3. Citizen science: You can help the rover drivers by categorizing terrain the rover and/or helicopter see on Mars. This can help fine tune the autonomous driving algorithms. To sign up, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8689/nasas-mars-rover-drivers-need-your-help/.

Whatever you decide to do, you will be helping to uncover the secrets of Mars. An ancient lake and river ecosystem’s story begins to get told. Stay tuned to all of the great journeys ahead for our intrepid explorers, Curiosity, Perseverance and Ingenuity.

I will see you on the plains of Mars.

Address: 2175 N. Roberts Ave, Lumberton, NC 28358