Nasa announces new rover mission to Mars in 2020 |
Nasa announces new rover mission to Mars in 2020 |
Dec 4 2012, 11:24 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 723 Joined: 13-June 04 Member No.: 82 |
NASA plans Mars rover remake for 2020
QUOTE NASA today announced a $1.5 billion plan to build another Mars rover based on the design of its current Curiosity rover, with the intention of sending it to the Red Planet in 2020 and perhaps storing up samples for later return to Earth.
The move comes less than a year after the space agency said it couldn't afford to contribute $1.4 billion to the European-led Exomars missions, and it seems likely to stir new debate within the planetary science community. Hoped-for missions to other interplanetary destinations, such as the Jovian moon Europa, could conceivably be impacted further by the revised plans for Mars exploration. John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, insisted that the budget could handle the new commitment. "This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity," he said in a NASA news release. He said the future rover would be built on the same basic design used for the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August, and thus capitalize on the design work that was done during Curiosity's development for its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission. Like Curiosity, the new rover would be nuclear-powered, thanks to a spare radioisotope thermoelectric generator, Grunsfeld said. Grunsfeld announced the plan during a town-hall session at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. Based on Twitter updates from the meeting, reaction was deeply mixed. "NASA town meeting audience is very quiet," Lindy Elkins-Tanton of the Carnegie Institution of Washington tweeted. "I think we are all in shock." Projected budget cuts have cast a pall of uncertainty over future plans for interplanetary probes, but the idea of bringing samples back from Mars for study on Earth is on top of planetary scientists' priority list for the next decade. Grunsfeld told his AGU audience that the rover could have the capability to gather and store samples for later return, depending on how its science mission is defined. NASA said a science definition team would be selected to outline the mission's objectives, and that the selection of science and instruments for the mission would then be openly competed. The mission would also help lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration of Mars, the agency said. "The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in today's statement. "With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s." Two rovers are currently in operation on Mars — Curiosity and Opportunity. Meanwhile, three working spacecraft are orbiting the Red Planet: the European Space Agency's Mars Express as well as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey orbiter. Next year, NASA is due to launch the $500 million MAVEN orbiter to study Mars' upper atmosphere. In 2016, NASA plans to send a $425 million lander called InSight to delve into Mars' depths. NASA also plans to participate in the European Space Agency's Exomars program by contributing radios for an orbiter and lander due for launch in 2016, as well as scientific apparatus for a 2018 rover. But the space agency had to trim back its commitment to Exomars early this year, in large part due to the need to cover cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope. The Russian Space Agency is filling the gap left by NASA's pullback. U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who has been critical of past cutbacks in NASA's planetary science program, applauded the plan announced today. "In its few short months on Mars, Curiosity has broadened our understanding of our planetary neighbor, and the findings announced thus far point to even greater discoveries as Curiosity continues to explore Gale Crater and Mount Sharp," Schiff said in a written statement. "An upgraded rover with additional instrumentation and capabilities is a logical next step that builds upon now-proven landing and surface operations systems." However, Schiff said he favored launching the rover in 2018 — when the alignment of Earth and Mars is more favorable, permitting the launch of a heavier payload. "I will be working with NASA, the White House and my colleagues in Congress to see whether advancing the launch date is possible, and what it would entail," he said. |
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Dec 9 2012, 09:25 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 94 Joined: 11-August 12 Member No.: 6536 |
I really don't understand what the scientific community is complaining about. They just got more rover for less money than the MAX-C proposal. This new rover has enough payload to keep everyone happy. The price that has to be paid is that existing hardware designs will have to be reused, which means no messing with the EDL or rover chassis. Those elements are working very well, so I don't see any problem there.
MSL has about 80kg of instruments, and something like an additional 30kg of drilling and sample processing hardware on a 67kg arm. The design for a core drill, arm and sample handling system for MAX-C worked out to weigh 24kg. There is no way to stop them from putting sample caching capability on the next rover. The space is there. Either the 40kg SAM instrument will be descoped and redesigned to be lighter, or the existing drilling and sample processing hardware will be redesigned and simplified. Neither option strikes me as difficult. By the way, the payload for a MER class rover is about 20kg, but really only 8kg if you consider a mast and a pancam essential for rover operation. The desired core drilling and sample handling hardware simply won't fit. The requirement for core drilling kills that option stone dead. The MAX-C study looked at a solar powered rover about twice the mass of MER and one third the mass of MSL, but that option worked out to cost over $2 billion. It turns out that reusing an existing design saves a lot of money. |
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Dec 11 2012, 06:03 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
It will be interesting to see what opportunities there are for payload refinement based on Curiosity's results. Maybe some test that we couldn't yet foresee will become of burning interest. Maybe after Curiosity has ground truthed its instruments against the same martian samples dozens of times, one of them will prove redundant, at least in terms of the mission goals. And then the payload could include a new instrument in the freed-up slot.
I wonder about the value of a higher resolution microscope. Curiosity's MAHLI resolution is 14 microns per pixel, which is about a 2X improvement on MER. I suppose it depends on the objective. |
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Dec 11 2012, 06:18 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
I wonder about the value of a higher resolution microscope.... I suppose it depends on the objective. Shhhhh.... Already mentioned, but I'll put in my vote for a geochronometer. It's been very frustrating to have little idea how old the various layers the rovers have been studying are. |
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