Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2020

49 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 ASTRONAUTICS The landing of the Mars 2020 rover in Jezero Crater, however, will not occur with the relative ease of Curiosity rover in Gale Crater. In fact, the region of Jezero is much rougher terrain and requires a higher pre- cision than that of any previous EDL (entry, descent, landing) phase. Nevertheless, re- cent technological advances allow for land- ings in an area 50% smaller than the one requested by Curiosity at the time, and therefore it is possible to approach more demanding sites without excessive risk. Furthermore, the landing device of the new rover is equipped with an instrument called Terrain Relative Navigation, which will as- sess the presence of unexpected obstacles (rocks, cliffs, fractures, etc.) at different al- titudes and will independently make the necessary corrections to the trajectory for a safe landing. !