CASTROL IN SPACE

Choose liquid engineering chosen by nasa

On 18 February 2021, after a seven-month journey from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, Florida, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover successfully landed at Jezero Crater on the Red Planet. It has already travelled tens of millions of miles, but its journey is just beginning.

Equipped with precision instruments Mars Perseverance must be able to operate in Mars' extreme environment, a planet where in summer it is 20°C at the equator and -153°C at the poles. Castrol specially developed Braycote greases and Brayco oils are vital in helping it to do this, holding their properties despite such dramatic temperature fluctuations to provide lubrication to its many scientific instruments, which include a weather station, ultraviolent spectrometer and laser micro imager.

The Perseverance mission isn't our first journey with NASA; they've chosen our innovative lubricants for over 60 years, including many of the pioneering Apollo missions. In fact, it isn't our first time on Mars; the NASA Curiosity Rover is also lubricated by Castrol. It landed on Mars in 2012 and is still up there, performing many years later.

Liquid engineering that’s out of this world

Our innovative clean technology helps the mechanisms on Perseverance to perform to the high-level needed whilst roaming the vast surface of Mars. The unique properties of Castrol Braycote greases and Brayco oils mean they don’t produce any by-product, even under intense pressure. As a result there are no emmisions, which could potentially condense in the Rover and risk causing mechanical failure.

The Perseverance Rover is equipped with state-of-the art scientific instruments and tools that have been meticulously designed to gather information about the biology, atmosphere and environmental conditions on Mars. These include 19 cameras that will deliver images of the landscape in breath-taking detail and are lubricated with Castrol Braycote greases and Brayco Oils, so that they can perform in these most inhospitable of environments.

Explore more Perseverance Rover mechanisms below that use Castrol Braycote and Brayco.

At the heart of technology

We’re proud of our decades working with NASA and the dreams of space travel that we’ve helped turn into a reality. A little closer to home we continue to play our part in industries as diverse as mining, shipping and automotive production while also powering cutting-edge transportation on land, sea and air.

Watch below to see how Castrol helped land the perseverance rover on mars

Not only have we been involved with every land speed record in history, but we also now provide advanced e-fluids for Formula E racing, helping these futuristic cars to race around the world. In the skies, we’ve been making the impossible possible all the way back to the Wright Brothers, who in 1903 successfully invented and flew the first powered aircraft. It’s surely no surprise that the first plane ever to loop-the-loop had Castrol pumping through its engine.

So, whether it's helping to explore new worlds in outer space or pushing the boundaries on every surface of the earth, we perform a critical role in developing cutting-edge technology which drives us forward.

The Mars Peseverance Rover is the largest, heaviest and most sophisticated of the two Rovers which NASA has sent to Mars. It’s scheduled to work for at least one Mars year (about 687 Earth days). Perseverance is searching for signs of ancient microbial life, characterising the planet's geology and climate and collecting rock and sediment samples for a possible return to Earth.

Explore more

Find out more about Castrol on land, sea, air and in space