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  1. HOME
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  3. CASTROL IN SPACE
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  5. CASTROL ON MARS

Castrol on Mars

Our Castrol Braycote greases and Brayco oils are helping NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover explore Mars, lubricating vital mechanisms and components.

In 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 Mars.

 

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.

 

The Perseverance mission 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.

Castrol’s specially developed Braycote greases and Brayco oils are vital in helping the Rover’s precision mechanisms operate in Mars’ extreme environment.

 

Our innovative 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-products, even under intense pressure. As a result, there are no emissions, which could potentially condense in the rover and risk causing mechanical failure.

 

Read more about Castrol Braycote greases and Brayco oils.

Failure is not an option

When you’re sending machinery into space, if it has moving parts, it needs lubrication. And when it’s a mission to Mars you don’t get a second chance. If anything goes wrong, it could jeopardise a mission that is years in the making, costing many millions of dollars.

Did you know?

It takes seven months to reach Mars, which is a staggering 300 million miles or 480 million kilometres away from Earth – that’s like going to the Moon and back 625 times.

Source: jpl.nasa.gov

Temperatures on Mars are brutal and extreme, fluctuating between -140°C at the poles in winter to 21°C at the equator in summer.

Source: NASA

For humans, the surface of Mars is an inhospitable place, with high levels of radiation, huge dust storms and a thin atmosphere with only 0.13% oxygen.

Source: Space.com

Scientists know there is ice on Mars at the poles and other frigid locations, but are yet to determine whether there is enough meltwater in the summer to support microbial life.

Source: NASA

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

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.

Perseverance - Navigate through the gallery to explore key mechanisms of the Perseverance Rover that use Castrol Braycote greases and Brayco oils.
MAST CAM Z - Perseverance’s mast-mounted camera system is capable of taking both 3D pictures and video at high speed. Its cameras are so powerful that they can capture an image as small as a housefly from over 100 metres away.
MOXIE - The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment is crucial to preparing for future human exploration of Mars. It demonstrates how we might one day turn the Planet’s Carbon Dioxide atmosphere into breathable oxygen.
SUPERCAM - No bigger than a cereal box, this device packs a great deal of power into a small space, including a laser that can vapourize rock. It does this by heating them to 10,000 degrees Celsius so a special camera can determine the chemical make-up of the rocks from the plasma produced.
SHERLOC - Or to give its full name, the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organs and Chemicals. Equipped with spectrometers and cameras, SHERLOC also uses ultraviolet laser light to spot organic chemicals in much the same way crime scene investigators hunt for forensic clues.
WATSON - Because where would SHERLOC be without him? As well as taking close-ups of the surface texture of Mars, this full-colour camera can be moved by Perseverance’s robotic arm to provide images of the Rover’s instruments and parts.
PIXL - The Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry has a tool called an X-Ray spectrometer, which identifies chemical elements at a tiny scale. So tiny, in fact, that it can focus on rock features as small as a grain of salt to look for past microbial signs of life.
CACHING SYSTEM - Perseverance is the first rover to bring a sample caching system to Mars that will package promising samples of rock and dust. These samples are an invaluable way to learn more about the secrets of Mars and will be left in tubes on the surface for retrieval by a future mission.
ROBOTIC ARM - Measuring 7 feet long, the robotic arm is equipped with a rotating turret containing science instruments, a camera, and a rock drill. The drill is powerful and precise enough to cut intact rock cores.
WHEEL DRIVE ACTUATORS - The wheels of Perseverance are lined with raised treads specially designed for the Martian desert. Each wheel has twice the number of treads as the Curiosity Rover: 48 in each Perseverance wheel, versus 24 in each of Curiosity’s – making it even better equipped to deal with the unforgiving terrain.
Perseverance - Navigate through the gallery to explore key mechanisms of the Perseverance Rover that use Castrol Braycote greases and Brayco oils.
MAST CAM Z - Perseverance’s mast-mounted camera system is capable of taking both 3D pictures and video at high speed. Its cameras are so powerful that they can capture an image as small as a housefly from over 100 metres away.
MOXIE - The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment is crucial to preparing for future human exploration of Mars. It demonstrates how we might one day turn the Planet’s Carbon Dioxide atmosphere into breathable oxygen.
SUPERCAM - No bigger than a cereal box, this device packs a great deal of power into a small space, including a laser that can vapourize rock. It does this by heating them to 10,000 degrees Celsius so a special camera can determine the chemical make-up of the rocks from the plasma produced.
SHERLOC - Or to give its full name, the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organs and Chemicals. Equipped with spectrometers and cameras, SHERLOC also uses ultraviolet laser light to spot organic chemicals in much the same way crime scene investigators hunt for forensic clues.
WATSON - Because where would SHERLOC be without him? As well as taking close-ups of the surface texture of Mars, this full-colour camera can be moved by Perseverance’s robotic arm to provide images of the Rover’s instruments and parts.
PIXL - The Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry has a tool called an X-Ray spectrometer, which identifies chemical elements at a tiny scale. So tiny, in fact, that it can focus on rock features as small as a grain of salt to look for past microbial signs of life.
CACHING SYSTEM - Perseverance is the first rover to bring a sample caching system to Mars that will package promising samples of rock and dust. These samples are an invaluable way to learn more about the secrets of Mars and will be left in tubes on the surface for retrieval by a future mission.
ROBOTIC ARM - Measuring 7 feet long, the robotic arm is equipped with a rotating turret containing science instruments, a camera, and a rock drill. The drill is powerful and precise enough to cut intact rock cores.
WHEEL DRIVE ACTUATORS - The wheels of Perseverance are lined with raised treads specially designed for the Martian desert. Each wheel has twice the number of treads as the Curiosity Rover: 48 in each Perseverance wheel, versus 24 in each of Curiosity’s – making it even better equipped to deal with the unforgiving terrain.
Track Perseverence’s X feed for live updates from the surface of Mars

Castrol on Mars podcast series

What are the most extreme and remote environments on our own planet?

 

We’ve spoken to some truly inspirational people who push themselves to their mental and physical limits, working with technologies on land sea and air. Places with machines that need similar Castrol products to those needed on Mars. In this podcast series, these people help transport us to their worlds - from the darkest depths of the sea, to the middle of the desert - and beyond our stratosphere.

 

Thanks to all who contributed, and we hope you enjoy listening.

 

Listen now.

Castrol on Mars podcast series

Listen to podcasts inspired by our work on Mars as we transport you to some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth.

Castronomy™

We work with the brightest minds to put our products to the test - delivering mission-critical performance that keeps the space sector moving forward.

Castrol on Earth

Much of what we do in space is similar to what we do here on Earth – and we apply the same rigour, expertise, and ethos wherever we operate.

Castrol on the Moon

Read about how we are testing our space-grade lubricants to withstand the extreme environment of the lunar surface with MIT Media Lab.