Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Destination: Alpha Centauri => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on July 31, 2014, 09:06:04 pm

Title: NASA's Next Mars Rover to Collect Martian Samples, Carry Lasers
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 31, 2014, 09:06:04 pm

NASA's Next Mars Rover to Collect Martian Samples, Carry Lasers
SPACE.com
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer  27 minutes ago


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Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, discusses the science instruments that will ride on the agency's next huge rover on the Mars 2020 mission during a press conference on July 31, 2014 at NASA headquarters



NASA's next Mars rover will feature lasers, ground-penetrating radar and other high-tech science gear designed to help it snag samples of the most interesting Martian rocks for eventual return to Earth.

The U.S. space agency announced today (July 31) that the new car-size rover will carry seven instruments when it launches toward the Red Planet in 2020. The different parts of the science payload are designed to work together to identify rocks that have the best chance of preserving evidence of past life on Mars, if it ever existed, officials said.

The Mars 2020 mission instruments "overlap, and they complement each other," Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., told reporters in a televised press conference announcing the instruments. "All of this leads to picking out those rocks that we want to core and cache and potentially bring back to Earth."

Examining Red Planet material in well-equipped labs here on Earth is the best way to search for signs of Mars life, scientists say.


The science gear

The 2020 rover will follow in the wheel tracks of NASA's Curiosity rover, which touched down in August 2012 to determine if Mars could ever have supported microbial life. Curiosity has already achieved that goal, finding that an area near its landing site was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

But NASA wants the next rover to go a step further. Last year, the mission's "science definition team" recommended that the 2020 rover search for biosignatures, cache samples for potential return to Earth and advance the space agency's goal of putting astronauts on Mars.


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This NASA graphic outlines the seven instruments riding on NASA's Mars Rover 2020. The space agency unveiled the science instrument package of the ambitious rover on July 31, 2014.


"It was kind of a tall order," Meyer said. But, he added, "we've been able to put together a great payload that actually meets or exceeds all the measurement requirements that this science definition team laid out 13 months ago."

Like Curiosity, the 2020 Mars rover will have six wheels, weigh about 1 ton and land with the aid of a rocket-powered sky crane, NASA officials said. But while Curiosity totes 10 science instruments, its cousin will sport just seven.

Two of those instruments will sit on the 2020 rover's head-like mast. MastCam Z is a stereoscopic camera system that will also have the ability to zoom in on interesting targets, officials said. And the laser-shooting SuperCam is an advanced version of Curiosity's ChemCam instrument, which allows the rover to determine the chemical composition of rocks from afar.

The rover will also carry two science instruments on its robotic arm — PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) and SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals).

PIXL, an X-ray flourescence spectrometer that also features a high-resolution imager, will allow mission scientists to perform fine-scale investigations of Martian rocks, officials said. SHERLOC is a spectrometer that will enable detailed study of rocks and, like SuperCam, also potentially detect organics.


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NASA's Mars Rover 2020 mission will borrow its basic design from the Mars rover Curiosity currently exploring the Red Planet. The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, is about the size of a Mini Cooper car.


The 2020 Mars rover's body will house the other three instruments, which include a high-tech weather station called MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer), a ground-penetrating radar system called RIMFAX (Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Exploration) and MOXIE, which is short for Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment.

MOXIE is designed to produce oxygen from Martian air, which is rich in carbon dioxide, demonstrating technology that could be useful for human explorers on the Red Planet.

"If you can actually cache and put oxygen in storage tanks before the crew even arrives and you know they have a habitable environment and place to go when they get there, that's tremendously important to us," said Bill Gersteinmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters.

MOXIE "will buy down the uncertainty of that," he added. "It'll make sure that we understand the risks associated with that, and we can do the appropriate planning as we move forward for human missions."

The seven instruments will cost NASA about $130 million, Grunsfeld said. The agency expects the entire 2020 Mars rover mission to cost about $1.9 billion, he added. (Curiosity's mission has a price tag of about $2.5 billion.)


Looking ahead to sample-return

The 2020 Mars rover will also feature a coring drill, which will collect samples of rocks flagged as promising by the robot's instrument suite. It's unclear at the moment where these samples will be stored; they may be carried on the rover or placed on the ground somewhere, officials said.

The goal is to eventually get those rocks back to Earth, where scientists all over the world can pore over them to search for signs of Mars life. This job is too difficult — and too important — to entrust to a robot all by itself on the surface of another world, NASA officials said.

"As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

"It's really going to be when we have the best analytical instruments, and our ability to interrogate these samples at the smallest scales with the best instruments, that we may really then be able to say for sure whether or not Mars once had life."

There's no concrete plan at the moment for bringing the samples back; no such return mission is on NASA's books. But properly sealed samples could be stored for 20 years or so on the Martian surface, Meyer said, so there's still time to figure out how to get them to Earth.

"I wouldn't rule out the possibilty that it's future astronauts that pick up the sample and bring it back to Earth," Grunsfeld said. "But that's forward work. We haven't defined that."


http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-next-mars-rover-collect-martian-samples-carry-192019219.html (http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-next-mars-rover-collect-martian-samples-carry-192019219.html)

Title: Mars 2020 rover will carry tools to make oxygen
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 31, 2014, 11:08:18 pm

Mars 2020 rover will carry tools to make oxygen
AFP
18 minutes ago


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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Mars, February 7, 2013 (AFP Photo/)



Washington (AFP) - The suite of space-age tools loaded on NASA's next robotic vehicle, bound for the Red Planet in 2020, will include a device for making oxygen out of carbon dioxide.

Designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Mars Oxygen ISRU (in situ research utilization) Experiment (MOXIE), aims to see if Martian air could be converted for astronauts to breathe.

NASA has sent a series of robotic vehicles to Mars -- the latest is the Curiosity rover which launched in 2012 -- and hopes to have people exploring the surface of Earth's neighboring planet by the 2030s.

"The 2020 rover will help answer questions about the Martian environment that astronauts will face and test technologies they need before landing on, exploring and returning from the Red Planet," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA.

The Mars 2020 rover also aims to "identify and select a collection of rock and soil samples that will be stored for potential return to Earth by a future mission."

It will "conduct geological assessments of the rover's landing site, determine the potential habitability of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life."

Other proposals accepted for the unmanned 2020 rover include advanced cameras and spectrometers for analyzing chemical composition, mineralogy and detecting organic compounds.

The rover will also carry a ground-penetrating radar and sensors for analyzing temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, relative humidity and dust, NASA said.

The proposals chosen by NASA as scientific tools are valued at $130 million.


http://news.yahoo.com/mars-2020-rover-carry-tools-oxygen-212236785.html (http://news.yahoo.com/mars-2020-rover-carry-tools-oxygen-212236785.html)

Title: NASA to test making rocket fuel ingredient on Mars
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 01, 2014, 12:07:12 am

NASA to test making rocket fuel ingredient on Mars
Associated Press
By SETH BORENSTEIN  44 minutes ago


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The Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a series of sedimentary deposits in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater (AFP Photo/Ho)



NASA plans to make oxygen — a key ingredient of rocket fuel — on Mars early next decade.

Space agency officials Thursday unveiled seven instruments they plan to put on a Martian rover that would launch in 2020, including two devices aimed at bigger Mars missions in the future.

The $1.9 billion rover will include an experiment that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. It could then be used to make rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe, said NASA associate administrator for exploration Bill Gerstenmaier.

Taking fuel to Mars for return flights is heavy and expensive.

The device, named MOXIE, works like an engine but in reverse, said Michael Hecht, the scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is running the test project. It will make about three-quarters of an ounce of oxygen an hour.

If it works, then a larger scale device — 100 times bigger than MOXIE — would be launched two years before astronauts go, currently slated for some time in the 2030s. NASA first plans to send astronauts to an asteroid.


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This undated graphic provided by NASA shows the Mars 2020 Rover. NASA plans to make oxygen _ a key rocket fuel ingredient _ on Mars early next decade. Space agency officials unveiled seven instruments they plan to put on a Martian rover that would launch in 2020, including two devices aimed at bigger future Mars missions. The $1.9 billion rover will include an experiment that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier said it could be then used as half of what’s needed for rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe. Taking fuel to Mars for return flights is heavy and expensive. (AP Photo/NASA)


The bigger device would start making enough oxygen for the return trip before astronauts ever launch to Mars, Hecht said. The other part of rocket fuel — the propellant — can be made from light hydrogen that is brought from Earth or other chemicals mined from Martian dirt or atmosphere.

John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said the new rover — a clone of the chassis of the current Curiosity machine — "will lead to getting humans to Mars in the future."

Mars on average is about 140 million miles from Earth and opportunities to send spaceships to there come only every 26 months. The trip to Mars takes about 9 months, but can be as short as half a year.

The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in 2021.

NASA also plans to collect interesting rocks, put them in sealed vials for future flights to pick them up and return them to Earth for detailed study. This would likely be another robotic mission or it could just wait for astronauts. NASA hasn't yet figured out how the rover will store the rocks.


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Image courtesy of NASA shows an artist's concept of a broken-up asteroid. Scientists think that a giant asteroid, which broke up long ago in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, eventually made its way to Earth and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Data from NASA's WISE mission likely rules out the leading suspect, a member of a family of asteroids called Baptistina, so the search for the origins of the dinosaur-killing asteroid goes on. (REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout)


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Online:

NASA Mars mission page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/main/index.html (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/main/index.html)


http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-test-making-rocket-fuel-ingredient-mars-210726025.html (http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-test-making-rocket-fuel-ingredient-mars-210726025.html)