Red Dragon |
Red Dragon |
Aug 7 2011, 09:46 AM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
'Red Dragon' Mission Mulled as Cheap Search for Mars Life
any opinion on this? would it really make sense adapting a manned spaceship to unmanned Mars landing? I am skeptical... if replying, please remember forum guideline 1.5 |
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Jan 4 2016, 04:40 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 201 Joined: 16-December 13 Member No.: 7067 |
I am hearing that Red Dragon is more likely to get to mars than InSight, in 2018 or 2020. NASA is going to have the opportunity to 'instrument the hell out of it'. It is a fairly concrete effort within NASA, for something I've only heard rumors about before recently. Are we allowed to speculate or wish for a set of instruments? (Nobody say seismometer)
We probably won't have to wait more than a year to hear a lot more about the project, but I'm curious about what could be done. I know sample return has been discussed, but on this timeline I think scientific instruments are more likely. |
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Jan 4 2016, 01:13 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 718 Joined: 22-April 05 Member No.: 351 |
I am hearing that Red Dragon is more likely to get to mars than InSight, in 2018 or 2020. NASA is going to have the opportunity to 'instrument the hell out of it'. It is a fairly concrete effort within NASA, for something I've only heard rumors about before recently. Are we allowed to speculate or wish for a set of instruments? (Nobody say seismometer) We probably won't have to wait more than a year to hear a lot more about the project, but I'm curious about what could be done. I know sample return has been discussed, but on this timeline I think scientific instruments are more likely. There's a lot of work needed to design and qualify systems that can reliably function for the months required for a Mars mission and then to ensure that the lander can function in the temperature extremes of Mars with just a few hours a day of good sun exposure. To give a comparison, one of the engineers I correspond with tells me that the standard CubeSat deployment racks that work well in Earth orbit need to be redesigned to ensure reliability on a planetary mission where the deployment may occur months or years after launch. Think of every system on a Red Dragon mission, and every one needs to be rated and tested for a longer and environmentally more extreme mission than the Earth-orbiting Dragon spacecraft with a lifetime of days or weeks. Red Dragon is an intriguing idea, but it's not something that that I think gets done quietly by some small team with some small budget. Space is hard. -------------------- |
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