http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/mars_materials2.htm

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/pdf/mar...m_synthesis.pdf is a good one

What would appear to be the most obvious change to the current mars roadmap is pushing MSL back to '11 - but flying two - bring the '11 Scout forward to '09 and still fly the telecoms orbiter in '09

Benefits - more time to perfect or redesign the Skycrane, assured comms ability with Telecoms orbiter already in situ - and perhaps an chance to fly an MER copy as the '09 Scout instead as a literal 'scout' for the second MSL.

Obviously Bruce was at some interesting meetings on the same subject - and isnt saying mutch (yet ) but of the multiple roadmaps presented - that to me would be the obvious call

Doug

Great info!

One interesting tidbit from the "Growing the Mars Community" link ( http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/pdf/mar...tem_6_final.pdf )



January 2006 EOM for the rovers? Sounds good to me!

I wonder if that EOM will hold. My guess is that it will depend on rover health. My guess is that Oppy will be alone then, but it may be in some interesting terrain.

Speaking of Opportunity...

"Mars Express OMEGA and Opportunity Coordination" : http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/pdf/mar...dmap_2_9_05.pdf has some great info on identification of different materials on Meridiani Planum using OMEGA, including a long term route map on the last page for Opportunity's trek to Victoria Crater.

"Astronomy" is about to put its version of my article on its website -- but, unfortunately, that article is so stripped down that it actually will tell the lot of you little more than that the Roadmap Group very much wanted to fly two or three MSLs instead of one. However, my hugely expanded version of that report will be going up pretty soon on "SpaceDaily" and DOES contain a fair amount of new material that isn't in the presentation materials from either of the first two meetings. (Of the presentation materials from Meeting 2-- which I only saw today -- the ones with the most material that was new to me were the ones on the possible redesign of the Mars Scout program and on the current beliefs about the proper design of a sample-return mission.)

If you delay MSL from 2009 to 2011 with the promise of a second rover, you risk losing the whole mission because of budget cuts. You have to take the money you can get now. The later the launch date, the greater the chance of being canceled. Better one MSL in 2009 and one in 2011. They will cancel the second anyway

I don't think Spirit will be dead by January 2006. The Sun is still rising in the southern hemisphere of Mars (Spirit being 15 degrees south) and will be 90 degrees in the sky twice, before and after August 2005. In January 2006 the sun (not the energy) situation will be the same than in March 2004. Even with lots of dust no need to die.

Analyst

I agree- fly MSL sooner rather than later. There was some talk during the Oppy launch delays that its launch might have been delayed to this year's window, and I don't think the science would have been any worse off - do the same with MSL if it's so important to fly more than one.

On the other hand, it's rare to cancel a spacecraft once metal is being cut, and by 2009 MSL will presumably have cut a lot of metal no matter what the launch date.

A lot of this will have to do with how Skycrane or whatever landing system they choose progresses. I would support delaying to 2011 if it would significantly increase the chance that the mission won't end up simply producing a new Martian crater. Otherwise I think the 2009 date is key.

Where has this Skycrane idea come from? I think it's really really neat, but it seems a bit, well.... nuts (although that was my reaction to the Pathfinder/MER landing scheme at first too). Does anyone know its history?

I always thought "Skycrane" sounded perilously close to the perjorative slang "skyhook." But I guess it's really just taking proven landing systems and just "landing" a few meters above the ground.

I would like to see it work in tests before I can trust it enough to watch the MSL EDL with the "normal" levels of apprehension and terror: Skycrane - Replacing "6 minutes from hell" with "6 minutes, 8 seconds from hell..."

Any chance of posting a screen shot of Opportunity's planned route to Victoria Crater? I had trouble trying to view the 19MB PDF on my dialup connection lol

Here you go.

Thanks

To add another advance tidbit from my SpaceDaily article: the rationale for Skycrane is simply that it's far lighter in weight than a legged lander carrying a rover on its top. However, MSL's manager Pete Theisinger confirmed to me that he's very apprehensive about the feasibility of Skycrane for exactly the reason you're all thinking of: the rover may swing back and forth and destabilize the hovering descent stage even during the few seconds it's being lowered that last 5 meters to the ground, and any attempt to "rigidize" the cable link between the rover and descent stage to prevent this would exert more leverage on the stage itself to tilt back and forth and thus make the problem worse. The whole thing comes down to whether the descent stage's control system can be designed to hold it stable enough during the lowering, and the tests this summer in the California desert are crucial to decide that. If it isn't feasible, Theisinger will fall back on his backup lander design: a "pallet" lander that just plumps down directly on its bottom (using outrigger stakes to make sure it doesn't tip over) even though this will bang up and crumple its descent engines and propellant tanks.

At the first meeting, the Roadmap Group were definitely leaning toward flying two or three MSLs because its main purpose is to find a place on Mars with traces of good interesting organics that might be biological in nature, which would then undergo follow-up study at the same place by a sample-return mission or by the more sophisticated Astrobiology Field Lab in-situ rover. If the first MSL finds no such organics, those later missions would be up the creek when it comes to selecting a landing site. However, there was no talk then about flying both MSLs in 2009, and I consider this unlikely -- the odds of seeing a second one in 2011 are much better. (And if none of the MSLs find any significant organics on Mars' surface, the next stage is likely to be one or more stationary "Deep Drill" landers to poke down 10-20 meters into the surface to look for them there, after which we'll start thinking about sample returns of such subsurface material.)

This plan really makes much more sense than continuing the current frenzied -- and expensive -- rush toward a first sample return mission in 2013 despite the fact that we're not even sure we'll have a good landing site for it by then. Cautious, my Precious! More haste less speed!

Space.com have recently published more hints about the direction of the Mars program based on comments from Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program Director.

article is here

I cant see the argument w.r.t. delaying MSL to ensure that MTO is in place before MSl arrives.

If MTO dies - it'll be dead 2 months before MSL landing, or 2.5 years before landing - and to be honest, it makes no difference. They couldnt cobble together another MTO for the next launch opp as it is. Unless you say "right - 4 years between MTO and MSL so we can build ANOTHER if the first dies" - and that's just madness.

MRO should be in place and if used carefully enough - could provide some good bandwidth - but only on short UHF sessions.

Of course - there's more than an iota of sense in perhaps flying one or mer MER's under the banner of 'scout' in the '09 frame and pushing two MSL's to '11. THAT way - you've got 4 very-well explored locations from which to pick the most suitable to send an MSL as well

I think sky-crane was designed that way just becaue it will look cool in an animation
Doug

The Mars Strategic Roadmap group did talk briefly at their first meeting about the possibility of trying to bump MTO up to 2007 to deal with precisely that eventuality, but noted that this would require a boost in the Mars program's near-term budget. I still think that the best course of action would be to build the first two MTOs simultaneously, launch the first in 2009, and then launch the second in 2011 ONLY if the first MTO had failed, so that it could support the first MSL in 2011. Otherwise the second MTO could simply be held in storage until needed. (The current plan is not to launch it until 2018, but the Galileo spacecraft was held in storage for that long successfully).

I'm seriously skeptical about launching two MSLs in 2011 not only because of cost, but because the results from the first MSL are likely to be very important in deciding what experiments should be put on the second MSL. Indeed, if the first MSL finds a promising enough supply of interesting trace organics, it might be preferable to jump straight to one of the more advanced follow-up missions (AFL or Sample Return) to the same site as the next big Mars mission in early 2016, rather than flying the second MSL in 2013 or 2016. My philosophy where Mars exploration is concerned remains Gollum's: "More haste less speed."

Depends if you call killing the HGA 'successfull'

Doug

Well, of course I'm assuming they won't keep driving the thing back and forth across the country in a truck...