Planning for NASA's 2020 Mars rover envisions a basic structure that capitalizes on re-using the design and engineering work done for the NASA rover Curiosity.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The rover NASA will send to Mars in 2020 should look for signs of past life, collect samples for possible future return to Earth, and demonstrate technology for future human exploration of the Red Planet, according to a report provided to the agency.
The 154-page document was prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, which NASA appointed in January to outline scientific objectives for the mission. The team, composed of 19 scientists and engineers from universities and research organizations, proposed a mission concept that could accomplish several high-priority planetary science goals and be a major step in meeting President Obama's challenge to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.
"Crafting the science and exploration goals is a crucial milestone in preparing for our next major Mars mission," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "The objectives determined by NASA with the input from this team will become the basis later this year for soliciting proposals to provide instruments to be part of the science payload on this exciting step in Mars exploration."
NASA will conduct an open competition for the payload and science instruments. They will be placed on a rover similar to Curiosity, which landed on Mars almost a year ago. Using Curiosity's design will help minimize mission costs and risks and deliver a rover that can accomplish the mission objectives.
The 2020 mission proposed by the Science Definition Team would build upon the accomplishments of Curiosity and other Mars missions. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers, along with several orbiters, found evidence Mars has a watery history. Curiosity recently confirmed that past environmental conditions on Mars could have supported living microbes. According to the Science Definition Team, looking for signs of past life is the next logical step.
The team's report details how the rover would use its instruments for visual, mineralogical and chemical analysis down to microscopic scale to understand the environment around its landing site and identify biosignatures, or features in the rocks and soil that could have been formed biologically.
"The Mars 2020 mission concept does not presume that life ever existed on Mars," said Jack Mustard, chairman of the Science Definition Team and a professor at the Geological Sciences at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "However, given the recent Curiosity findings, past Martian life seems possible, and we should begin the difficult endeavor of seeking the signs of life. No matter what we learn, we would make significant progress in understanding the circumstances of early life existing on Earth and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life."
The measurements needed to explore a site on Mars to interpret ancient habitability and the potential for preserved biosignatures are identical to those needed to select and cache samples for future return to Earth. The Science Definition Team is proposing the rover collect and package as many as 31 samples of rock cores and soil for a later mission to bring back for more definitive analysis in laboratories on Earth. The science conducted by the rover's instruments would expand our knowledge of Mars and provide the context needed to make wise decisions about whether to return the samples to Earth.
"The Mars 2020 mission will provide a unique capability to address the major questions of habitability and life in the solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "This mission represents a major step towards creating high-value sampling and interrogation methods, as part of a broader strategy for sample returns by planetary missions."
Samples collected and analyzed by the rover will help inform future human exploration missions to Mars. The rover could make measurements and technology demonstrations to help designers of a human expedition understand any hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate how to collect carbon dioxide, which could be a resource for making oxygen and rocket fuel. Improved precision landing technology that enhances the scientific value of robotic missions also will be critical for eventual human exploration on the surface.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages NASA's Mars Exploration Program for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
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Quelle: NASA
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Update: 1.08.2014
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NASA Touts 2020 Mars Rover's Scientific Gear
NASA has announced the 2020 Mars rover's loadout of scientific instruments, and it's clear that the focus is on both detecting life and evaluating the possibility of future colonization. The 2020 rover, which is yet to be officially named, will carry seven major devices or clusters of sensors, several of which have catchy acronyms or abbreviations: SHERLOC, MOXIE, PIXL. The focus of these various cameras and sensors is to get readings of unprecedented accuracy on the composition, structure and ORIGIN of the Martian surface.
X-Ray spectroscopy will determine elemental composition of nearby rocks and dust, while a UV laser and other sensors will watch for organic compounds. Meanwhile, a ground-penetrating radar will give an idea of subterranean structures — in case of underground waterways (or TUNNELS dug by Red Planet residents). And an experimental technology will demonstrate the ability to turn Martian carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen — useful for both propulsion and breathing. NASA's Mars Mission website has more information on the new instruments, from their capabilities to their origins and operators. In addition, more landers and ORBITERS are planned for the meantime.
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Quelle: NBC
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Mars 2020 Rover Instrument Suite Chosen by NASA To Search for Past Life and Prepare for Human Explorers
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The advanced science payload package that will launch on NASA’s next car sized rover to the Red Planet in 2020 on a ground breaking mission seeking signs of past life while also testing key technology to prepare for future human explorers, was announced by NASA managers today, Thursday, July 31, in a media briefing at the space agency’s headquarters in Washington.
The ambitious and innovative Mars 2020 rover instruments include the first camera with a zoom lens capable of 3-D imaging, ground penetrating radar, lasers, an investigation to produce oxygen usable as rocket fuel and for humans to breathe, a WEATHER STATION and a rock sample caching system for retrieval and return to Earth by an undefined future mission.
The instruments will work in concert as much as feasible in examining rocks to give scientists the best chance of finding organic molecules, looking for direct evidence of ancient life and searching for minerals that are indicative of a habitable zone that could support microbial life in the past or even today, if it exists.
A science suite of seven high powered instruments was selected for development and integration onto the Mars 2020 rover from a COMPETITION that drew 58 proposals from science and engineering teams worldwide – double the usual number and exemplifying a deep interest in robotic exploration by the science community.
All the proposals were submitted by January 2014 and have since been evaluated and scrutinized by NASA management to meet the twin challenge of producing the best possible science to search for organic molecules as precursors to life while simultaneously advancing the goal of humans to Mars by testing technology for using the planets own natural resources to enable future astronauts expeditions as early as the 2030s.
“The 2020 Mars rover will build on the science from Curiosity and other Mars missions,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the briefing.
“The rover carries innovative new instruments to look for signs of past life. Unless we try hard things we will NEVER advance.”
The seven WINNING instruments will conduct an unprecedented combination of science and technology investigations furthering the search for life and helping to enable manned missions to the Red Planet.
“The Mars 2020 rover, with these new advanced scientific instruments, including those from our international partners, holds the promise to unlock more mysteries of Mars’ past as revealed in the GEOLOGICAL record,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
“This mission will further our search for life in the universe and also offer opportunities to advance new capabilities in exploration technology.”
Two instruments will be located on the mast (Mastcam-Z and Supercam), three on the rover body (MOXIE, MEDA and RIMFAX) and two more on the robotic arm (PIXL and SHERLOC).
OVERALL the science instrument package weighs about 45 kilograms compared to about 70 kilograms for Curiosity.
The 2020 rover is the next big step on Mars, building on prior missions and paving the way for future human missions,” said Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Division at NASA HQ.
Mars 2020 is truly an international mission. Two of the seven instruments come from Spain and Norway and there is significant international participation on several others.
“Over 50 institutions are represented worldwide,” said Michael Meyer, LEAD scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
“ALL seven instruments will work together and no measurements are done only by one instrument.”
The technology demonstration experiment dubbed the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) is essentially a critical demonstration of using Mars’ natural occurring resources for ‘living off the land.’ Atmospheric carbon dioxide (the main constituent of Mars atmosphere) will be used to generate oxygen – useful both as rocket fuel and for the survival of human explorers. Enormous amounts of money can be saved by implementing ISRU (In Situ Resource Utilization) rather than ferrying all life support supplies from Earth across hundreds of millions of miles of interplanetary space.
MOXIE Principal Investigator Michael Hecht of MIT said that the goal is to “produce 20 grams of oxygen per hour on 50 occasions during the mission.”
“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 Headquarters in Washington.
“Mars has resources needed to help sustain life, which can reduce the amount of supplies that human missions will need to carry. Better understanding the Martian dust and weather will be valuable data for planning human Mars missions. Testing ways to extract these resources and understand the environment will help make the pioneering of Mars feasible.”
In order to cut costs and development time the rover will leverage the science and landing architecture developed for NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover that successfully accomplished an unprecedented and dramatic pinpoint landing on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012 using the rocket assisted skycrane descent maneuver.
NASA said that the overall Mars 2020 program cost is about $1.9 Billion including some $130 million to design and build the seven instruments SUITE. Since the new rover is essentially an MSL 2 except for the science instruments, most of the development risks have been retired and the cost is significantly less than the approximate $2.4 Billion cost for Curiosity.
Several instruments will be capable of detecting very low levels of organic molecules, the science team told AmericaSpace. Organics are essential precursors to life.
The Mars 2020 rover will also have a sample cacher with the ability to store up to 31 core samples collected by the rover’s drill for later retrieval and return to Earth at an as yet unspecified time.
“The purpose of the cacher is to find samples so compelling that they are worth returning to Earth,” said Grunsfeld.
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Creating a Returnable Cache of Martian Samples is a major objective for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. This prototype shows hardware to cache samples of cores drilled from Martian rocks for possible future return to Earth. The 2020 rover will be able to collect and package a carefully selected set of up to 31 samples in a cache that could be returned to Earth by a later mission. The capabilities of laboratories on Earth for detailed examination of cores drilled from Martian rocks would far exceed the capabilities of any set of instruments that could feasibly be flown to Mars. For scale, the diameter of the core sample shown in the image is 0.4 inch (1 centimeter). CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Here is the complete list of the science SUITE of seven payloads, descriptions and principal investigators chosen for NASA’s 2020 Mars rover:
- Mastcam-Z, an advanced camera system with panoramic and stereoscopic imaging capability with the ability to zoom. The instrument also will determine mineralogy of the Martian surface and assist with rover operations. The principal investigator is James Bell, Arizona State University in Phoenix.
Bell is a LEADING member of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) science team and lead investigator for the Pancam camera instrument on Spirit and Opportunity.
- SuperCam, an instrument that can provide imaging, chemical composition analysis, and mineralogy. The instrument will also be able to detect the presence of organic compounds in rocks and regolith from a distance. The principal investigator is Roger Wiens, Los ALAMOS National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico. This instrument also has a significant contribution from the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales,Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plane’tologie (CNES/IRAP) France.
- Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer that will also contain an imager with high resolution to determine the fine scale elemental composition of Martian surface materials. PIXL will provide capabilities that permit more detailed detection and analysis of chemical elements than ever before. The principal investigator is Abigail Allwood, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
- Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC), a spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and uses an ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer to fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements with other instruments in the payload. The principal investigator is Luther Beegle, JPL.
- The Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE), an exploration technology investigation that will produce oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide. The principal investigator is Michael Hecht, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), a set of sensors that will provide measurements of temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, relative humidity and dust size and shape. The principal investigator is Jose Rodriguez-Manfredi, Centro de Astrobiologia, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacial, Spain.
- The Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Exploration (RIMFAX), a ground-penetrating radar that will provide centimeter-scale resolution of the GEOLOGIC structure of the subsurface. The principal investigator is Svein-Erik Hamran, Forsvarets Forskning Institute, Norway.
Therefore the instruments are a mix of more sophisticated, upgraded hardware versions working on Curiosity at this moment as WELL as new instruments to 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, according to NASA.
“While getting to and landing on Mars is hard, Curiosity was an iconic example of how our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way for humans to pioneer Mars and beyond,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, in a statement.
“Mars exploration will be this generation’s legacy, and the Mars 2020 rover will be another critical step on humans’ journey to the Red Planet.”
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Quelle: AS
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Update: 15.12.2014
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Mars Exploration Program Director Named
NASA's Mars Exploration Program Director, Jim Watzin
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NASA has taken another step in its Journey to Mars.
Jim Watzin has been named the new director for the agency's Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Watzin, whose duties begin Dec. 1, succeeds Jim Green, NASA's planetary sciences chief who had been the acting Mars director since December 2012.
"Jim brings the right leadership at the right time to the Mars program," said Green. "His experience and creativity will be instrumental in making the Mars 2020 rover a reality, guiding the success of the missions leading up to it, and bridging the gap from science to the future human exploration of the Red Planet. We're excited to have him join us."
Watzin most recently served as the technical director and deputy program executive for Command, Control, Communication, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Huntsville, Alabama. Among his other duties, he oversaw MDA's space development and test activities.
"Jim has a demonstrated track record of successfully leading innovative, cost-constrained and schedule-driven scientific space mission developments," said Green.
Watzin graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. In 1980, he earned a master's degree in aerospace dynamics and control from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland in 1980, where he began a career focused largely on challenging, paradigm-shifting space exploration programs.
With a hands-on background in systems engineering, Watzin has led multiple flight projects and program offices, serving as the NASA program manager for several programs that included Living with a Star, Solar Terrestrial Probes, and Robotic Lunar Exploration.
He was the founder of the Planetary Projects Division at Goddard, where he oversaw the development of the Mars Science Laboratory's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite and mentored the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission formulation teams. MAVEN reached Mars two months ago and has begun studying its upper atmosphere. OSIRIS-REx will launch in 2016 to visit an asteroid and bring a sample of it back to Earth.
A fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers are on and around the Red Planet, paving the way for future human missions on a Journey to Mars. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover's data are helping plan how to protect the astronauts who will explore Mars. The Mars 2020 rover will seek signs of past life and will demonstrate new technologies that could help astronauts survive on Mars.
The Mars 2020 mission will be based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed more than two years ago, and currently is operating on Mars. The new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to 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.
Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth's, so studying Mars helps us learn more about our own planet's history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?
"The Mars Exploration Program is one of the most exciting initiatives at NASA," said Watzin. "I'm looking forward to the challenge and thrilled to have the opportunity to help set the stage for the next decade of exploration."
Besides MAVEN, Curiosity and Mars 2020, the agency's Mars Exploration Program also includes the Opportunity rover, the Odyssey orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
In 2016, a Mars lander mission called InSight will launch to take the first look into the deep interior of Mars. The agency also is participating in the European Space Agency's (ESA's) 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 orbiter and a critical element of the astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.
NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential -- preparing the way for future human spaceflight to Mars.
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Quelle: NASA
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Update: 25.09.2015
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Mars 2020 rover set to find life outside of Earth
Apparently, we’re not alone in the universe. Or, at least, we don’t know if life is possible on other planets, especially Mars.
To find out whether this is possible, a team of NASA scientists are working on the next Mars rover, set to visit Mars in 2020. Briony Horgan, Purdue assistant professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, is helping the team design and test the rover’s camera system: the Mastcam-Z.
The Mars 2020 rover will look similar to the Curiosity rover, which landed in August 2012, but has a different goal. Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, was one of the rovers sent to find evidence of water and habitable environments on Mars. NASA scientists will use data collected from those rovers to land the new rover on Mars to find signs of ancient Martian microbial life. The Mars 2020 rover will then carry samples back to Earth for scientists to determine whether microbial life is possible on Mars, while Curiosity will stay on Mars indefinitely and analyze its samples there.
“You can only do so much with rovers,” Horgan said. “They are advanced robots, but they can’t compete with humans in labs on Earth.”
The Mastcam-Z will help the Mars 2020 rover analyze the planet’s landscape. Its two cameras have filters that measure how rocks respond to different wavelengths, which help scientists identify the types of rocks found on Mars. They will also create 3D and panoramic pictures to help the rover navigate around the area and help in spectroscopic analysis.
“We are trying to understand the history of life on Earth and the origin of life,” Horgan said. “We really don’t have a geological record of how life was first forming on Earth because that’s all been destroyed by plate tectonics. But on places like Mars, all those rocks are still preserved.”
So far, the scientists narrowed the list of landing sites down to eight and will narrow it down to four in January of 2017. Some of those sites are river deltas, where there is a high chance of organics and biosignatures, and others are hydrothermal sites, one of which was the Spirit rover’s landing site. Horgan herself is advocating a completely different site, Marth Valis, which is a big plateau covering most of the planet.
“It looks a lot like the Painted Desert in Arizona,” Horgan said. “You have these beautiful stacks of brightly colored soils stacked on top of each other. There’s every kind of environment you can imagine, all preserved in those layers.”
Some of Horgan’s students are helping her with her research on Mars’ landscape to decide where the rover should land. Rachel Maxwell, a senior in the College of Science, decided to become involved with this project because of the importance of searching for life outside of the Earth.
“I’m looking forward to watching the rover’s launch and landing to say, ‘I helped put it together,’” Maxwell said.
The Mars 2020 rover mission may lead to humans traveling to Mars, but according to Horgan, some people believe humans should not explore another planet until we have a sample of it on Earth. However, she said minerals found in Mars are very similar to the ones found in Earth, which she believes is encouraging.
“I think the biggest question we can answer about the universe right now is ‘how unique are we, the Earth and life?’” Horgan said. “Once you can show that microbial life is common, it’s less of a big step to say that intelligent life must be pretty common, too.”
Quelle: The Exponent
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Update: 15.07.2016
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NASA's Next Mars Rover Progresses Toward 2020 Launch
This image is from computer-assisted-design work on the Mars 2020 rover. The design leverages many successful features of NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, but also adds new science instruments and a sampling system to carry out new goals for the 2020 mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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After an extensive review process and passing a major development milestone, NASA is ready to proceed with final design and construction of its next Mars rover, currently targeted to launch in the summer of 2020 and arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021.
The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life. Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of soil and rock and cache them on the surface for potential return to Earth by a future mission.
“The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth,” said Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA’s Journey to Mars – to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the Red Planet.”
To reduce risk and provide cost savings, the 2020 rover will look much like its six-wheeled, one-ton predecessor, Curiosity, but with an array of new science instruments and enhancements to explore Mars as never before. For example, the rover will conduct the first investigation into the usability and availability of Martian resources, including oxygen, in preparation for human missions.
Mars 2020 will carry an entirely new subsystem to collect and prepare Martian rocks and soil samples that includes a coring drill on its arm and a rack of sample tubes. About 30 of these sample tubes will be deposited at select locations for return on a potential future sample-retrieval mission. In laboratories on Earth, specimens from Mars could be analyzed for evidence of past life on Mars and possible health hazards for future human missions.
Two science instruments mounted on the rover’s robotic arm will be used to search for signs of past life and determine where to collect samples by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of Martian rocks. On the rover’s mast, two science instruments will provide high-resolution imaging and three types of spectroscopy for characterizing rocks and soil from a distance, also helping to determine which rock targets to explore up close.
A suite of sensors on the mast and deck will monitor weather conditions and the dust environment, and a ground-penetrating radar will assess sub-surface geologic structure.
The Mars 2020 rover will use the same sky crane landing system as Curiosity, but will have the ability to land in more challenging terrain with two enhancements, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing candidates.
"By adding what’s known as range trigger, we can specify where we want the parachute to open, not just at what velocity we want it to open,” said Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent and landing lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "That shrinks our landing area by nearly half."
Terrain-relative navigation on the new rover will use onboard analysis of downward-looking images taken during descent, matching them to a map that indicates zones designated unsafe for landing.
"As it is descending, the spacecraft can tell whether it is headed for one of the unsafe zones and divert to safe ground nearby,” said Chen. "With this capability, we can now consider landing areas with unsafe zones that previously would have disqualified the whole area. Also, we can land closer to a specific science destination, for less driving after landing."
There will be a suite of cameras and a microphone that will capture the never-before-seen or heard imagery and sounds of the entry, descent and landing sequence. Information from the descent cameras and microphone will provide valuable data to assist in planning future Mars landings, and make for thrilling video.
"Nobody has ever seen what a parachute looks like as it is opening in the Martian atmosphere,” said JPL's David Gruel, assistant flight system manager for the Mars 2020 mission. “So this will provide valuable engineering information.”
Microphones have flown on previous missions to Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, but never have actually been used on the surface of the Red Planet.
"This will be a great opportunity for the public to hear the sounds of Mars for the first time, and it could also provide useful engineering information," said Mars 2020 Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace of JPL.
Once a mission receives preliminary approval, it must go through four rigorous technical and programmatic reviews – known as Key Decision Points (KDP) — to proceed through the phases of development prior to launch. Phase A involves concept and requirements definition, Phase B is preliminary design and technology development, Phase C is final design and fabrication, and Phase D is system assembly, testing, and launch. Mars 2020 has just passed its KDP-C milestone.
"Since Mars 2020 is leveraging the design and some spare hardware from Curiosity, a significant amount of the mission's heritage components have already been built during Phases A and B,” said George Tahu, Mars 2020 program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With the KDP to enter Phase C completed, the project is proceeding with final design and construction of the new systems, as well as the rest of the heritage elements for the mission."
The Mars 2020 mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Driven by scientific discovery, the program currently includes two active rovers and three NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars. NASA also plans to launch a stationary Mars lander in 2018, InSight, to study the deep interior of Mars.
JPL manages the Mars 2020 project and the Mars Exploration Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 17.08.2016
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New technique may help detect Martian life
A novel interpretation of Raman spectra will help the 2020 Mars rover select rocks to study for signs of life.
In 2020, NASA plans to launch a new Mars rover that will be tasked with probing a region of the planet scientists believe could hold remnants of ancient microbial life. The rover will collect samples of rocks and soil, and store them on the Martian surface; the samples would be returned to Earth sometime in the distant future so that scientists can meticulously analyze the samples for signs of present or former extraterrestrial life.
Now, as reported in the journal Carbon, MIT scientists have developed a technique that will help the rover quickly and non-invasively identify sediments that are relatively unaltered, and that maintain much of their original composition. Such “pristine” samples give scientists the best chance for identifying signs of former life, if they exist, as opposed to rocks whose histories have been wiped clean by geological processes such as excessive heating or radiation damage.
Spectroscopy on Mars
The team’s technique centers on a new way to interpret the results of Raman spectroscopy, a common, non-destructive process that geologists use to identify the chemical composition of ancient rocks. Among its suite of scientific tools, the 2020 Mars rover includes SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), an instrument that will acquire Raman spectra from samples on or just below the Martian surface. SHERLOC will be pivotal in determining whether life ever existed on Mars.
Raman spectroscopy measures the minute vibrations of atoms within the molecules of a given material. For example, graphite is composed of a very orderly arrangement of carbon atoms. The bonds between these carbon atoms vibrate naturally, at a frequency that scientists can measure when they focus a laser beam on graphite’s surface.
As atoms and molecules vibrate at various frequencies depending on what they are bound to, Raman spectroscopy enables scientists to identify key aspects of a sample’s chemical composition. More importantly, the technique can determine whether a sample contains carbonaceous matter — a first clue that the sample may also harbor signs of life.
But Roger Summons, professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at MIT, says the chemical picture that scientists have so far been able to discern using Raman spectroscopy has been somewhat fuzzy. For example, a Raman spectrum acquired from a piece of coal on Earth might look very similar to that of an organic particle in a meteorite that was originally made in space.
“We don’t have a way to confidently distinguish between organic matter that was once biological in origin, versus organic matter that came from some other chemical process,” Summons says.
However, Nicola Ferralis, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, discovered hidden features in Raman spectra that can give a more informed picture of a sample’s chemical makeup. Specifically, the researchers were able to estimate the ratio of hydrogen to carbon atoms from the substructure of the peaks in Raman spectra. This is important because the more heating any rock has experienced, the more the organic matter becomes altered, specifically through the loss of hydrogen in the form of methane.
The improved technique enables scientists to more accurately interpret the meaning of existing Raman spectra, and quickly evaluate the ratio of hydrogen to carbon — thereby identifying the most pristine, ancient samples of rocks for further study. Summons says this may also help scientists and engineers working with the SHERLOC instrument on the 2020 Mars rover to zero in on ideal Martian samples.
“This may help in deciding what samples the 2020 rover will archive,” Summons says. “It will be looking for organic matter preserved in sediments, and this will allow a more informed selection of samples for potential return to Earth.”
Seeing the hidden peaks
A Raman spectrum represents the vibration of a molecule or atom, in response to laser light. A typical spectrum for a sample containing organic matter appears as a curve with two main peaks — one wide peak, and a sharper, more narrow peak. Researchers have previously labeled the wide peak as the D (disordered) band, as vibrations in this region correlate with carbon atoms that have a disordered makeup, bound to any number of other elements. The second, more narrow peak is the G (graphite) band, which is typically related to more ordered arrangements of carbon, such as is found in graphitic materials.
Ferralis, working with ancient sediment samples being investigated in the Summons’ lab, identified substructures within the main D band that are directly related to the amount of hydrogen in a sample. That is, the higher these sub-peaks, the more hydrogen is present — an indication that the sample has been relatively less altered, and its original chemical makeup better preserved.
To test this new interpretation, the team sought to apply Raman spectroscopy, and their analytic technique, to samples of sediments whose chemical composition was already known. They obtained additional samples of ancient kerogen — fragments of organic matter in sedimentary rocks — from a team based at the University of California at Los Angeles, who in the 1980s had used meticulous, painstaking chemical methods to accurately determine the ratio of hydrogen to carbon.
The team quickly estimated the same ratio, first using Raman spectroscopy to generate spectra of the various kerogen samples, then using their method to interpret the peaks in each spectrum. The team’s ratios of hydrogen to carbon closely matched the original ratios.
“This means our method is sound, and we don’t need to do an insane or impossible amount of chemical purification to get a precise answer,” Summons says.
Mapping a fossil
Going a step further, the researchers wondered whether they could use their technique to map the chemical composition of a microscopic fossil, which ordinarily would contain so little carbon that it would be undetectable by traditional chemistry techniques.
“We were wondering, could we map across a single microscopic fossil and see if any chemical differences were preserved?” Summons says.
To answer that question, the team obtained a microscopic fossil of a protist — an ancient, single-celled organism that could represent a simple alga or its predator. Scientists deduce that such fossils were once biological in origin, simply from their appearance and their similarity to hundreds of other patterns in the fossil record.
The team used Raman spectroscopy to measure the atomic vibrations throughout the fossil, at a sub-micron resolution, and then analyzed the resulting spectra using their new analytic technique. They then created a chemical map based on their analysis.
“The fossil has seen the same thermal history throughout, and yet we found the cell wall and cell contents have higher hydrogen than the cell’s matrix or its exterior,” Summons says. “That to me is evidence of biology. It might not convince everybody, but it’s a significant improvement than what we had before.”
Ultimately, Summons says that, in addition to identifying promising samples on Mars, the group’s technique will help paleontologists understand Earth’s own biological evolution.
“We’re interested in the oldest organic matter preserved on the planet that might tell us something about the physiologies of Earth’s earliest forms of cellular life,” Summons says. “We’re hoping to understand, for example, when did the biological carbon cycle that we have on the Earth today first appear? How did it evolve over time? This technique will ultimately help us to find organic matter that is minimally altered, to help us learn more about what organisms were made of, and how they worked.”
This work was supported by Shell Oil Company and Schlumberger through the X-Shale Consortium under the MIT-Energy Initiative, and Extramural Research by Shell Innovation Research and Development, The Simons Foundation Collaboration on the Origins of Life, the NASA Astrobiology Institute, and the Max Planck Society.
Quelle: MIT News
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Update: 27.08.2016
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NASA Just Gave ULA the Launch Contract for Mars 2020
NASA’s highly anticipated Mars 2020 — which will look for signs of ancient or current alien life on the red planet — will launch into space in July of 2020. The spaceflight company responsible for getting the little dude up into space and en route to Mars will be United Launch Services LLC (ULA), NASA announced Thursday.
ULA will aim to conduct the launch via an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Mars 2020 will be tasked with a very wide array of different research, including geological investigations, scanning the surface for signs of potential habitability, and digging into the ground for evidence of ancient Martian life.
The most exciting part about Mars 2020 is that it will acquire samples of the red planet’s rocks to potentially bring back to Earth on a future mission.
Although Mars 2020 will be a profound upgrade to Curiosity, the latter will still be used to investigate other parts of the Martian landscape for as long as it stays operational.
The total cost to launch Mars 2020 will be about $243 million, which includes the launch services contract awarded to ULA. The company has quietly accrued a string of commercial spaceflight successes in the last few years — including the launch of the Delta IV Heavy, the world’s largest rocket so far. That achievement was likely a significant boost for the company’s chances to earn the Mars 2020 contract.
Quelle: INVERSE
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Update: 12.01.2017
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Seeking Signs of Life and More: NASA's Mars 2020 Mission
The next Mars rover will be able to land near rugged terrain, giving scientists access to diverse landscapes. It will also cache core samples, a first step in the quest to return samples to Earth.
Artist’s conception of the instrument mast for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which will carry out new objectives using the basic engineering of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA recently confirmed that it plans to fly to Mars in 2020, sending the fifth in a series of increasingly ambitious rovers to investigate the Red Planet. The specific landing site hasn’t been chosen yet, but the Mars 2020 mission will explore one of several possible paleoenvironments older than 3.5 billion years that might once have been conducive to microbial life.
The rover will assess the geology of the landing site and analyze surface targets for signs of ancient life using imaging, organic and inorganic geochemistry, and mineralogy. Notably, the rover, also called Mars 2020, will also be the first to select, collect, and cache a suite of samples from another planet for possible future return to Earth, fulfilling the vision of the most recent planetary science decadal survey to take the first step toward Mars Sample Return [National Research Council, 2011].
A Shift in Strategy
Previous rovers used sophisticated analytic instruments and prepared rock and soil specimens for analysis on board the rover itself. Mars 2020, however, will be the first rover tasked with detailed exploration of the surface to support the collection of a large, high-value sample suite designated for possible later study in laboratories back on Earth.
Conceptually, Mars 2020 marks a transition from missions in which sampling guided exploration to one where exploration guides sampling. In other words, the rover’s scientific instruments will observe the surrounding terrain and provide the critical context for choosing where samples will be collected. Ultimately, this context will also be used to interpret the samples. This evolution is familiar on Earth, where initial field observations and limited sampling in the service of geologic mapping lead to hypotheses that are eventually tested through focused sample collection and laboratory analysis.
Instruments on Board
Fig. 1. The Mars 2020 rover closely follows the design of Curiosity, but it has new scientific instruments and a sampling and caching system for the drilling and storage of samples for possible return to Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The architecture of this mission closely follows the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and its Curiosity rover, but Mars 2020 will be modified with new scientific instruments and capabilities that allow more intensive and efficient use of the rover (Figure 1).
Two instruments will be mounted on the rover mast: Mastcam-Z, a high-resolution, color stereo zoom camera, and SuperCam, a multifaceted instrument that collects spectroscopic data using visible–near-infrared (Vis-NIR), Raman, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) techniques. SuperCam will analyze data from rock and regolith materials that may be several meters away from the rover to characterize their texture, mineralogy, and chemistry.
Two instruments on the robotic arm will permit researchers to study rock surfaces with unprecedented spatial resolution (features as small as about 100 micrometers). The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) will use X-ray fluorescence to map elemental composition, whereas Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) will use deep-UV Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy to map the molecular chemistry of organic matter and select mineral classes. SHERLOC also includes a high-resolution color microscopic imager.
The rover will be able to assess subsurface geologic structure using a ground-penetrating radar instrument called Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX). The rover will characterize environmental conditions, including temperature, humidity, and winds, using the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instrument. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) will demonstrate a critical technology for human exploration of Mars by converting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to oxygen as a potential source of rocket propellant.
Rover Hits the Ground Running
In addition to the new scientific instruments, Mars 2020 builds on the innovative MSL “sky crane” entry, descent, and landing system. The sky crane lowers the rover to the surface from a rocket-powered descent stage rather than using air bags to provide a soft landing. New onboard navigational capabilities will enable the rover to land closer to regions with abundant rock outcroppings, which are scientifically desirable but potentially hazardous for landing. The rover will also have stronger wheels to reduce the puncture problems that plague the Curiosity rover.
New onboard software provides the rover with more autonomy for driving and for science investigations. New Earth-based tools and practices will enable the operations team to assess results and develop the next planning cycle over a much shorter timeline.
Studying the Samples
Mars 2020 will carry an entirely new subsystem to collect and prepare samples. As studies of lunar samples returned by the Apollo missions demonstrated, specimens brought back from Mars would be analyzed for an extraordinary diversity of purposes. Notable examples include igneous and sedimentary petrology, geochemistry, geochronology, and astrobiology.
Samples brought back to Earth would also help researchers assess hazards associated with possible human exploration of Mars. And, of course, the samples would be analyzed for the presence of current life on Mars.
Readying samples for such study creates demanding requirements on this subsystem (Table 1). These requirements and their implementation are informed by previous studies [e.g., McLennan et al., 2012; Summons et al., 2014], as well as by the mission’s Returned Sample Science Board. Notable among these requirements are capabilities to ensure that contamination from Earth, brought over by the spacecraft, is limited to less than 10 parts per billion of total organic carbon and statistically less than one viable Earth organism in each of the returned samples.
Table 1. Requirements for the Samples to Be Prepared for Caching by the Mars 2020 Mission
Category
Requirement
Number of samples
at least 31
Sample mass, each
10- to 15-gram cylindrical cores
Contamination limits
Inorganic
limits on 21 key geochemical elements based on Martian meteorite concentrations
Organic
<10 parts per billion total organic carbon
<1 part per billion of 10 critical marker compounds
