Mgs Resolves Meridiani-like Outcrops Options

[SigurRosFan]

- Light-toned Rock

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-1329, 1 January 2006

[djellison]

Giving 200 Whrs as basically the cut-off of survivability, it's more like 90-150 sols on your graphs

Doug

[helvick]

Giving 200 Whrs as basically the cut-off of survivability, it's more like 90-150 sols on your graphs

I think abalone's point was that if you could land such a rover in late winter you could have rising overall insolation for 100 -150 or so Sols prior to the start of this sample chart of mine which was based on the Spirit landing date so a 250+ Sol mission might be possible, the 90-150 Sol limit is only the case if you land at the same time as spirit did in late summer at 60 or so Sols before the Autumnal equinox.

The very rapid drop off in insolation with the onset of winter comes from the proximity to the martian "antartic" circle - this location is only 10 degrees closer to the equator than Phoenix's landing site.

I don't know enough about mars transfer orbits to tell whether there are practical launch windows that could place such a lander on the surface at the right time.

One possibility for "cheap" lander\rovers would be to develop core mechanics\electronics that could reliably hibernate through deep winter. Add in (semi) pointable solar arrays and you might be able to build a long lived rover or lander that could work at these latitudes for longer than a single summer season. RTG's are obviously the answer at the moment for large rovers like MSL but it would be nice to see a fleet of small sensor landers\rovers scattered across a much wider selection of terrains at some stage.