Friday, December 31, 2010
11 Things Americans Will Be doing In Space In 2011
11 things Americans will be doing in space in 2011 ASTEROID SEEKER: NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shown in an artist's concept, is propelled by ion engines. The satellite will study asteroids to help understand how planets form. (Illustration: NASA)From private spaceflights to NASA missions to the moon, Mars and beyond, the next year promises to be a busy one for Americans in space. Here's a preview of just some of the coming attractions for U.S. spaceflight in 2011. 1. Banking on private space planes The year 2011 could be the time space tourism finally makes it big. In October 2010, the privately developed space plane SpaceShipTwo detached from its mother ship for the first time and glided safely to Earth from a height of more than 45,000 feet (13,700 meters), landing at the Mojave Air and Space Port in New Mexico. Two additional test runs followed shortly thereafter. Sir Richard Branson's space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, is banking on SpaceShipTwo to carry up to six passengers at a time on a 2 1 /2-hour trip to the edge of outer space, where they will experience a few minutes of weightlessness. According to the company, more than 370 wannabe astronauts have put down deposits toward the $200,000 ticket to secure a seat on a future flight. Although Virgin hasn't committed to a fixed schedule yet, SpaceShipTwo's successful test glides paved the way for a series of powered test flights in early 2011. Designer Burt Rutan has said that 50 to 100 such flights will be needed before Virgin can begin accepting paid passengers. 2. Roving and spying on Mars While one of NASA's twin Mars rovers lies dormant, the other looks set to keep on trucking in 2011, marking the seventh straight year of activity since the rovers landed on the Red Planet in 2004. The Spirit rover, stationary since getting stuck in deep sand in April 2009, finally went silent in March 2010 and is thought to be hibernating. Meanwhile, Opportunity remains on course to visit the 13.7-mile-wide impact crater Endeavor. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted evidence of clay minerals along Endeavor's rim. If Opportunity can make it there, the rover would be able to conduct the first up-close inspections of Martian clays, which are believed to have formed in the presence of water. Look forward to a year full of electronic picture postcards as Opportunity continues its 11.8-mile journey, begun from Victoria Crater in late 2008. As of September, the rover had covered half the distance to Endeavor. The trip was originally estimated to take two years. 3. Testing private orbital spaceships Some new players in transport to the International Space Station (ISS) could come online in 2011. Hawthorne, Calif.-based company SpaceX conducted the first successful launch and recovery of its Dragon capsule in early December 2010, marking the first time a private company has achieved such a feat. In 2006, NASA chose SpaceX to develop a cargo launch system for the ISS. The company came up with Dragon, an Apollo-like capsule designed to carry up to seven people, or a mix of cargo and people. NASA's agreement with SpaceX calls for three progressively more complex test flights, but with the success of the initial flight, the company said it might combine the second and third flights and send Dragon directly to the ISS as soon as next year. A second recipient of a NASA contract — Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences — was scheduled to launch its Cygnus spacecraft in late 2010 aboard a Taurus II rocket, but the test was postponed until mid-2011. 4. Arriving at a comet The early months of 2011 should see NASA missions make contact with a pair of previously visited celestial bodies — one small, one large. First up is the Stardust-NExT mission, scheduled to fly within 200 kilometers (120 miles) of comet Tempel 1 on Valentine's Day. In 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft slammed an impactor probe into Tempel 1, leaving a crater 100 meters wide and 30 meters deep. Stardust-NExT (for Next Exploration of Tempel) will concentrate on taking high-resolution images of the comet's surface, including the crater, as well as measuring the comet's composition and the size distribution and flux of its dust grains. The following month, NASA plans to insert the MESSENGER spacecraft into an elliptical, 12-hour orbit around Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet. MESSENGER (short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) has already flown past Mercury three times in a series of breaking maneuvers, sending back the first up-close views of the planet since the mid-1970s and taking measurements of its magnetic field. Once in orbit around the planet, MESSENGER will study its magnetic field in greater detail and examine Mercury's surface for evidence of volcanic processes. 5. Retiring the space shuttle fleet On April 12, 1981 — 20 years to the day after the former Soviet Union put the first person in space — NASA inaugurated the space shuttle program with the maiden voyage of the Columbia orbiter. In 2011, the shuttle program is set to come to a close. In its 30 years of service, the space shuttle fleet deployed the Hubble Space Telescope and did the heavy lifting for assembly of the International Space Station. The shuttle was originally scheduled to be mothballed in 2010, to be replaced by a new spacecraft called Orion, part of the Constellation program initiated by the Bush administration. But President Obama reversed course, and Congress canceled Constellation in October. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft or future commercial spacecraft are now set to take over duties of ferrying astronauts to and from the space station. At least two, and possibly three, final space shuttle flights are scheduled for 2011. 6. Marking 50 years of human spaceflight Humanity will celebrate its 50th year in space on April 12, 2011. On that date in 1961, 27-year-old Yuri Gagarin became the first person to reach space, orbiting Earth for 108 minutes in Vostok 1. The space race took off 23 days after Gagarin's epoch-making flight, when the United States put its own astronaut into space — 38-year-old Alan Shepard, piloting the Mercury capsule Freedom 7. Since then, the only other country to launch a human into space has been China, although more than 30 countries have contributed crewmembers to space flights. Along the way, a series of ever-larger space stations has maintained a human presence in space, culminating in the ISS, which has been continuously inhabited for the past 10 years. 7. Completing the International Space Station The last remaining shuttle missions will help do the job by hauling up large spare parts. In February, Discovery will take up a spare room for storage and a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2. In April, Endeavor will carry a $1.5 billion astrophysics experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, to look for signs of antimatter, dark matter and cosmic rays beyond the Milky Way. And in June, a proposed mission of the shuttle Atlantis could bring up a cargo bay full of spare parts and supplies. Together, the missions will end more than 10 years of construction for the $100 billion space station, the longest continuously inhabited and operating station in space. 8. Visiting an asteroid NASA is making preparations for a rendezvous with an asteroid in August 2011. In February, the Hubble Space Telescope acquired new views of Vesta, a 329-mile-long space rock between Mars and Jupiter, to aid in the arrival of the Dawn spacecraft next August. Launched in 2007, Dawn is on an eight-year, 3 billion-mile trip to explore Vesta and Ceres, the two largest known asteroids in the solar system. Dawn's mission is to better understand the formation of the solar system. Because asteroids are left-over material from planet formation, scientists expect to learn something from them about what the early solar system was like. The spacecraft's instruments are designed to hunt for water-bearing minerals and to measure the shape, surface topography, tectonic history, and elemental and mineral composition of both its targets. It is also expected to measure their masses and gravity fields. Powered by a xenon ion engine, Dawn received a speed boost in February 2009 when it performed a slingshot maneuver around Mars. 9. Heading for Jupiter The controlled plunge of the Galileo probe into Jupiter's atmosphere in 2003 put an end to the first dedicated mission to the solar system's largest planet. Now the time has come for a return visit. In April 2010, NASA engineers and technicians began testing and launch preparations for Juno, Galileo's successor. Set to launch in August 2011, the solar-powered probe will reach Jupiter in 2016, where it will enter a highly elliptical orbit and use nine science instruments to begin studying the planet's deep structure, atmosphere and magnetic field. On the mission checklist: investigating whether Jupiter has a solid core, mapping its intense magnetic field, measuring the amount of water and ammonia in its deep atmosphere, and observing the planet's auroras. 10. Returning to the moon The mysteries of moon dust and lunar gravity are in NASA's crosshairs for 2011, as a pair of new probes gets set to launch aboard an unmanned Delta 2 rocket in September. Packed together will be the $80 million LADEE probe and the $375 million GRAIL spacecraft. LADEE, short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, is an orbiter designed for a 100-day mission to study the moon's atmosphere and clingy dust, both of which may figure into future manned returns to the moon. LADEE is expected to carry a spectrometer to probe the atmosphere and a dust detector for examining samples of the moon's gritty regolith that have wafted into space. (Regolith is a blanket of loose soil, rocks and dust that covers some celestial bodies.) Its partner mission, GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), consists of a pair of spacecraft that will orbit in tandem to map the moon's gravity in high detail, which will give scientists a better idea of its subsurface structure and internal history. The two missions will separate only after they are en route to the moon, with LADEE expected to take about five months to enter orbit and check its systems. 11. Sending a new mission to Mars Over the past six years, NASA's Mars landers have studied the geology of the Red Planet and discovered water ice at its north pole. The space agency is set to take the next step in its Mars program in 2011 with the launch of the $2.3 billion Mars Science Laboratory. Nicknamed Curiosity, the new rover is twice as long and four times as heavy as its predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, or about the size of a Mini Cooper, and comes equipped with a laser for vaporizing samples of rock. The goal of the mission is to determine whether Mars was ever hospitable to microbial life. Engineers were busy this year putting Curiosity through its paces. In September, they attached and flexed the rover's jointed, 7.5-foot titanium arm, which will eventually sport a camera and a spectrometer to examine samples of rock and soil where they lie. They have also been maneuvering the six-wheeled rover over a series of ramps in a clean room to test its mobility. This article was reprinted with permission from SPACE.com. |
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Methane On Mars-New Discoveries
Now you don't...
The never-ending search for life on Mars continues
Methane on Mars
Dec 29th 2010 | from PRINT EDITION
TOWARDS the end of 2011 a large and hugely expensive robotic rover called Curiosity is due to blast off for Mars from Cape Canaveral. If it makes it safely to the planet’s surface in August 2012 (getting down from orbit in one piece has not always proved easy for space probes) one of the first things it will do is sniff the air. Its creators, back on Earth, will be straining to see if that air carries a whiff of methane.
In 2004 three different groups said they had seen signs of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Since, on Earth, almost all atmospheric methane comes from living things, this provided the biggest news from the planet since ALH 84001, a meteorite purportedly bearing Martian fossils, created headlines in 1996.
The shimmering phantasm that is Martian life helps explain why the exploration of Mars soaks up more effort and expenditure than any other branch of planetary science. The barren, arid, radiation-slaked landscape revealed by early probes put to rest the idea that there might be anything living on the Martian surface. But some people hope there are living things below this inhospitable exterior. Methane would be evidence in favour of that. Thoughts of the gas have therefore shaped Curiosity’s scientific programme—and in 2016 the first Mars mission to bring together NASA, America’s space agency, and ESA, its European counterpart, is to be devoted to analysing trace gases in the atmosphere, with methane the star attraction.
There have, though, always been doubts about Martian methane. As with ALH 84001 the eye of faith has, in the view of sceptics, been too willing to interpret observations in the most favourable light—and when observations are as strikingly hard to make as those which seek traces of gas in a thin atmosphere so far away, lighting can be everything.
Those views have now been given a particularly thoroughgoing expression in a paper inIcarus by Kevin Zahnle, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Centre, in California, and two colleagues. This paper is not the last word on the subject, but the case it assembles is a powerful one, ranging from spectroscopic minutiae to a close look at how hard it is to fit the methane data into what is known about Mars as a whole.
One of the things that everyone agrees about methane on Mars is that it has to be short-lived. Though Mars has relatively little oxygen in its atmosphere (just 0.13% of the total) that atmosphere nonetheless provides what chemists call oxidising power, which gives it the ability to pull methane molecules to pieces. The predicted lifetime of Martian methane, based on observations of the Earth’s atmosphere and experiments in laboratories, is just 300 years. This is one of the reasons why methane was seen as an exciting discovery—its constant oxidation in the atmosphere means it would have to be replenished by some occult process. Even if there was no life involved that would, at least, require that some novel chemistry was going on.
The problem is that observations of methane on Mars imply that its lifetime must be far shorter than a few hundred years. They indicate that the gas comes and goes on a seasonal basis, with much more of it around at some times and places than others. If methane waxes and wanes with the seasons, then its lifetime must be on a par with the length of a season—several months, not several centuries.
Various suggestions as to how this might be possible have been made. There could be special catalysts in the soil, for example, perhaps created by the static electricity whipped up by dust devils. Dr Zahnle and his colleagues argue that such ideas merely pass the buck. Whatever oxidises the methane would itself get used up in the process, and so would also need to be replenished. To oxidise the methane at a high rate the planet would need to make new oxidising chemicals at that same high rate. There is no evidence of its doing so.
The known way in which oxidising power gets added to the Martian atmosphere is through the destruction of water molecules by ultraviolet light. This creates hydrogen and oxygen. Left to themselves they would recombine, producing no net change, but some of the hydrogen leaks out of the atmosphere into space, leaving oxygen—the paradigmatical oxidiser—behind. This process works too slowly, though, to account for the sudden drops seen in the methane level. Explaining these requires new ways of producing oxidising power which do nothing to alter the balance of other chemicals in the atmosphere. That seems a tall order.
There are other things which might be happening to the methane. It could be stored on the surfaces of minerals, or locked into exotic ices, or even eaten by yet more bugs. But all these, too, are inconsistent with the big picture. Mars has xenon in its atmosphere, and xenon atoms are similar enough to methane molecules that a physical process which locked up methane would lock up xenon too. Yet the xenon persists, airily unfettered. As to methane-eating bugs, a look at the planet as a whole again seems to rule that possibility out. Carbon monoxide offers a lot more energy per molecule to hungry microbes than methane does—but Mars’s carbon monoxide level is stable and much higher than the claimed methane level. Martian life might be different from terrestrial life in many ways, but it is hard to conceive of any form of life that would spurn a rich and abundant energy supply in favour of a scarce and less fulfilling one. Darwin would certainly not have approved of such pickiness.
Carl Sagan, a devoted student of Mars (and, as it happens, once an editor of Icarus), used to say that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Dr Zahnle and his colleagues show that a rapidly fluctuating level of methane is an even more extraordinary claim than has been widely appreciated. That puts a pressure on the evidence which it may not be able to bear.
The three sets of observations that purported to see methane on Mars all relied on the absorption lines which the gas imposes on light at specific wavelengths. Two of these sets of observations were made from the Earth, one from an ESA spacecraft orbiting Mars. The spacecraft’s instrument is not particularly precise, and although a model of the Martian atmosphere containing methane gives a better match to the spectra it sees than a methane-free model does, the match is not that great, and does not explain all the spectral anomalies in the data. Were these the only observations of methane on Mars, the subject would be viewed with much more scepticism.
Far more precise observations are possible from Earth. But here there is a different problem. Mars’s atmosphere is thin, and even the highest levels of methane it might contain are low. The Earth’s atmosphere is thick and contains a lot more methane. A ray of sunlight that passes down through the Martian atmosphere, bounces off the planet’s surface, goes back up through the atmosphere, traverses interplanetary space and then comes down through the Earth’s atmosphere to a mountaintop observatory encounters about 2,000 times more methane molecules on the Earthly leg of its journey than on the two Martian ones put together. That rather tends to swamp the signal.
The only thing that makes the distinctive spectral features of methane on Mars worth looking for is that spectral lines caused by methane on Mars are offset compared with the same lines caused by methane on Earth, thanks to the relative movement of the two planets. Even so, there are a great many absorption lines of other sorts that can lead to confusion, with different lines potentially masking the signal depending on whether Mars is coming or going.
There is also the problem that the carbon in methane comes in different isotopic forms, and the different forms have subtly different spectra. In some circumstances, a feature caused by a rare isotope in the Earth’s atmosphere might mimic the expected feature from normal methane on Mars. Dr Zahnle and his colleagues point out various ways that these factors could have misled observers.
The observers are not taking this criticism lying down. Michael Mumma, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, leads the only Earthbound team still gathering the sort of data in which Martian methane has been seen. Having served as a referee on Dr Zahnle’s paper, he withdrew from the process, saying there was too much wrong with the paper for it to be fixed. He will be writing a rebuttal soon, he says. Dr Zahnle’s team hope that it includes raw data Dr Mumma has not yet published and which might put some of the arguments to rest. Both will look forward to data from Curiosity.
In the meantime, the debate carries a worthwhile scientific lesson in itself. Observations, which to an outsider might sound like simple things, are often remarkably difficult, and depend on complex models to make any sense at all. Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s ally in the fight to get evolution accepted, spoke warmly of the facility with which ugly facts can kill beautiful theories. But that fatal ability should not hide the fact that well-applied theories, beautiful and otherwise, can play a crucial role in deciding which observations get treated as facts in the first place.
from PRINT EDITION | Science and Technology
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
A Space X Dragon Capsule For Deep Space Missions Includingf Mars
Dragons for Deep Space?
from orbithanger.com
In a few years SpaceX's Dragon spaceships could be taking American astronauts to the ISS, but can ihey take astronauts further out? To the Moon and beyond? Elon Musk hinted as much when he mentioned that Dragon's heat shield could handle a return from the Moon or Mars. But it takes more then a heat shield to conduct a deep space mission so lets look at the Dragon a bit deeper. Firstly lets compare it to other spacecraft.
Apollo (CM) : Volume- 6.2 sq m Mass - 5.56 MT
Soyuz : Volume 10 sq m Mass 7.07 MT
Orion Volume 19.55 sq m Mass 8.9MT (thats for the capsule only, the service module is another 12.3 MT)
Dragon Volume 10 sq m Mass 4.2 MT
We know that Orion and Apollo can do Moon missions, that's what they were designed for. In fact Orion doesn't even need a Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle. LockMart have recently proposed a Farside Moon mission for Orion (he full 21 MT vehicle) using a Delta V Heavy . So the much lighter Dragon should certainly be able to do Lunar mission. Also, do remember the Falcon 9 Heavy is a more powerful rocket then the ELLVs.
However a mission further out to say, a NEO asteroid, is another matter. The spaceship would need to operate for longer periods and be large enough to carry enough consumables for the voyage. Not to mention have enough room to house the astronauts in reasonable comfort. Lockheed Martin came up with a proposal for anasteroid mission with Orion too. They proposed using two Orions, one for the two person crew and another for the consumables.
Even two Dragons would have only slightly larger volume than a single Orion so that's out. However there may be away around the problem. Underneath the heat shield there the trunk. It contains the solar panels and radiators but not much else. There's up to 34 sq m of unpressurised cargo space. That cargo can be a pressurised module. Egress from the capsule to the module would need to be provided . A hatch would be ideal although it would need to be cut through the heat shield. However the MOL program successfully flight tested a Gemini capsule with a connecting hatch back in the 60's. Such a setup would provide Dragon with a more then double the volume of two Orions. So Dragons for deep space? Maybe.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Some Beautiful Pictures From A Mars Lake Bed
Latest From Mars: Frosty Landscapes, Ancient Lakebed, Potential Landing Site
Richardson Crater Dunes, Partially Defrosted. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
A new batch of images has been released by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissaince Orbiter and –as usual — they are stunning. In the image above, there is a lot going on! Numerous dust devil tracks have left their criss-crossing marks on the dune field found in Richardson Crater. The dunes are covered by seasonal carbon dioxide frost, which has only partially defrosted, although the image was acquired late in Mars’ southern spring. There are channels carved into the ground and HiRISE scientists says the could have been created by blocks of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) slide down the slope and sublimate (evaporate directly from solid to gas). Wouldn’t that be fun to be there and watch happen!
See more of the “coolest” and latest Mars images from HiRISE below:
Megabreccia at Holden Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
This image shows what could have been a once-habitable ancient lake on Mars, and a never-before-seen impact “megabreccia” in Holden Crater. The megabreccia is topped by layers of fine sediments that formed in what apparently was a long-lived, calm lake that filled Holden crater on early Mars, HiRISE scientists say.
“Holden crater has some of the best-exposed lake deposits and ancient megabreccia known on Mars,” said HiRISE’s principal investigator, professor Alfred McEwen of the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. ”Both contain minerals that formed in the presence of water and mark potentially habitable environments. This would be an excellent place to send a rover or sample-return mission to make major advances in understanding if Mars supported life.“
Holden Crater is an impact crater that formed within an older, multi-ringed impact basin called Holden Basin. Before an impact created Holden crater, large channels crossed and deposited sediments in Holden Basin. While water certainly flowed over the planet later in its history, it may have flowed only in short-lived, or catastrophic events.
Potential Future Mars Landing Site: Mounds in Acidalia Planitia. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Will a future spacecraft touch down at this location? Acidalia Planitia has several mounds thought to be “mud” volcanoes. Mud volcanoes are geological structures formed when a mixture of gas, liquid and fine-grained rock (or mud) is forced to the surface from several meters to kilometers underground. Scientists are targeting these mud volcanoes because the sediments, brought from depth, could contain organic materials that might provide evidence for possible past and present microbial life on Mars.
Frost Covered Gullies. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Here are some frosty gullies in a crater in Terra Sirenum in the Southern hemisphere of Mars, and HiRISE scientists say the frost is likely water frost instead of of CO2 frost because temperatures at this latitude probably do not get cold enough for carbon dioxide to condense.
The formation of gullies on Mars have been a point of disagreement among planetary scientists, as several theories support erosion by liquid water, while others favor dry debris flows or carbon dioxide. A major unknown is, said Kelly Kolb at the HiRISE site, if the gullies are formed by liquid water, does the water originate from the surface or subsurface?
The formation of gullies on Mars have been a point of disagreement among planetary scientists, as several theories support erosion by liquid water, while others favor dry debris flows or carbon dioxide. A major unknown is, said Kelly Kolb at the HiRISE site, if the gullies are formed by liquid water, does the water originate from the surface or subsurface?
“Dendritic structures, such as those seen in the alcove displayed in the subimage (approximately 1.3 km across; 2560 x 3000, 7MB), form from surface runoff on Earth,” Kolb wrote. “Water originating in the subsurface would not produce a structure like this. This alcove is evidence for a surface source for the water possibly required to form gullies.”
Kolb also noted that on this images, gullies occur at multiple elevations along the same crater wall. “This is uncommon on Mars. Gullies, whether or not they are found in conjunction with an obvious horizontal layer, usually form at the same elevation on a given slope. It is unknown what caused these gullies to form at multiple elevations. Their locations are suggestive of a distributed water source, which also favors a surface, rather than a confined subsurface origin of water, such as an aquifer.”
Thursday, December 23, 2010
First Manned Landing On Mars October 26, 1951
First Manned Mars Landing October 26, 1951
I know that I got your attention with that one! How could this be possible? Was this another Orson Wells hoax?
A couple of weeks ago I was going through some old videos in my library. I found a series from 1951-1953 called Tales of Tomorrow. It aired on the then fledgling ABC network. I watched an episode called Test Flight.
The veteran actor Lee J. Cobb played a character named Wayne Crowder. He was a wealthy company owner with a dream to send a manned rocket to Mars. He initially spent $20 million dollars to develop a chemical rocket to fly to Mars.
Then an eccentric genius named Wilkins appeared in his office with the plan for a rocket using magnetic levitation. Wayne Crowder ended up investing over $1 billion dollars for his rocket to Mars. (This was 59 years ago when one could buy a decent new home for $9,000 dollars).
The rocket lifts off from New Mexico and heads into space. The eccentric genius Wilkins tells Wayne Crowder they are going to Mars. Crowder tells Wilkins to turn the rocket around and go back to earth. Wilkins admits that he is from Mars and the controls of the ship are locked. The ship lands on Mars.
It’s amazing that almost 60 years ago science fiction writers foresaw a privately-financed mission to Mars. I brought this show to the attention of none other than Elon Musk. He thanked me and described it as interesting.
If you want to watch the program here is the link from IMDB and Hulu:
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
NASA Spacecraft Provides Travel Tips For Mars Rover
NASA Spacecraft Provides Travel Tips for Mars Rover
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to record this view of Santa Maria crater at the end of a drive during the 2,450th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 15, 2010). › Larger view
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December 16, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO -- NASA's Mars Opportunity rover is getting important tips from an orbiting spacecraft as it explores areas that might hold clues about past Martian environments.
Researchers are using a mineral-mapping instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to help the rover investigate a large ancient crater called Endeavour. The orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) is providing maps of minerals at Endeavour's rim that are helping the team choose which area to explore first and where to go from there. As Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter orbits more than 241 kilometers high (150 miles), the CRISM instrument provides mapping information for mineral exposures on the surface as small as a tennis court.
"This is the first time mineral detections from orbit are being used in tactical decisions about where to drive on Mars," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is the deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and a co-investigator for CRISM.
Opportunity's science team chose to begin driving the rover toward the 22.5-kilometer-wide (14-mile-wide) crater in 2008, after four years studying other sites in what initially was planned as a three-month mission. The rover has traveled approximately nine miles since setting out for Endeavour crater. It will take several months to reach it.
The team plans for Opportunity's exploration of Endeavour to begin at a rim fragment called Cape York. That feature is too low to be visible by the rover, but appears from orbit to be nearly surrounded by water-bearing minerals. The planned route then turns southward toward a higher rim fragment called Cape Tribulation, where CRISM has detected a class of clay minerals not investigated yet by a ground mission. Spacecraft orbiting Mars found these minerals to be widespread on the planet. The presence of clay minerals at Endeavour suggests an earlier and milder wet environment than the very acidic, wet one indicated by previous evidence found by Opportunity.
"We used to have a disconnect between the scale of identifying minerals from orbit and what missions on the surface could examine," said CRISM team member Janice Bishop of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and the SETI Institute of Mountain View, Calif. "Now, rovers are driving farther and orbital footprints are getting smaller."
Ten years ago, an imaging spectrometer on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter found an Oklahoma-sized area with a type of the mineral hematite exposed. This discovery motivated selection of the area as Opportunity's 2004 landing site. Each pixel footprint for that spectrometer was 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) across. CRISM resolves areas about 18 meters (60 feet) across. Last fall, the instrument began using a pixel-overlap technique that provided even better resolution.
Opportunity has just reached a 90-meter-diameter crater (300-foot) called Santa Maria, where CRISM detected a patch of ground with indications of water bound into the mineral. Opportunity will conduct a science campaign at the crater for the next several weeks to compare the ground results to the orbital indications.
"Opportunity has driven farther in the past Martian year than in any previous one," said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
A Martian year lasts approximately 23 months. During the past Martian year, Opportunity covered more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) of the mission's 26 total kilometers (16 miles) traveled since it landed in January 2004. The rover has returned more than 141,000 images.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the Red Planet in 2006 to begin a two-year primary science mission. Its data show Mars had diverse wet environments at many locations for differing durations during the planet's history, and climate-change cycles persist into the present era. The mission has returned more planetary data than all other Mars missions combined.
JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., manages CRISM.
For more information about Mars missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars .
Researchers are using a mineral-mapping instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to help the rover investigate a large ancient crater called Endeavour. The orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) is providing maps of minerals at Endeavour's rim that are helping the team choose which area to explore first and where to go from there. As Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter orbits more than 241 kilometers high (150 miles), the CRISM instrument provides mapping information for mineral exposures on the surface as small as a tennis court.
"This is the first time mineral detections from orbit are being used in tactical decisions about where to drive on Mars," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is the deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and a co-investigator for CRISM.
Opportunity's science team chose to begin driving the rover toward the 22.5-kilometer-wide (14-mile-wide) crater in 2008, after four years studying other sites in what initially was planned as a three-month mission. The rover has traveled approximately nine miles since setting out for Endeavour crater. It will take several months to reach it.
The team plans for Opportunity's exploration of Endeavour to begin at a rim fragment called Cape York. That feature is too low to be visible by the rover, but appears from orbit to be nearly surrounded by water-bearing minerals. The planned route then turns southward toward a higher rim fragment called Cape Tribulation, where CRISM has detected a class of clay minerals not investigated yet by a ground mission. Spacecraft orbiting Mars found these minerals to be widespread on the planet. The presence of clay minerals at Endeavour suggests an earlier and milder wet environment than the very acidic, wet one indicated by previous evidence found by Opportunity.
"We used to have a disconnect between the scale of identifying minerals from orbit and what missions on the surface could examine," said CRISM team member Janice Bishop of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and the SETI Institute of Mountain View, Calif. "Now, rovers are driving farther and orbital footprints are getting smaller."
Ten years ago, an imaging spectrometer on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter found an Oklahoma-sized area with a type of the mineral hematite exposed. This discovery motivated selection of the area as Opportunity's 2004 landing site. Each pixel footprint for that spectrometer was 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) across. CRISM resolves areas about 18 meters (60 feet) across. Last fall, the instrument began using a pixel-overlap technique that provided even better resolution.
Opportunity has just reached a 90-meter-diameter crater (300-foot) called Santa Maria, where CRISM detected a patch of ground with indications of water bound into the mineral. Opportunity will conduct a science campaign at the crater for the next several weeks to compare the ground results to the orbital indications.
"Opportunity has driven farther in the past Martian year than in any previous one," said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
A Martian year lasts approximately 23 months. During the past Martian year, Opportunity covered more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) of the mission's 26 total kilometers (16 miles) traveled since it landed in January 2004. The rover has returned more than 141,000 images.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the Red Planet in 2006 to begin a two-year primary science mission. Its data show Mars had diverse wet environments at many locations for differing durations during the planet's history, and climate-change cycles persist into the present era. The mission has returned more planetary data than all other Mars missions combined.
JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., manages CRISM.
For more information about Mars missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars .
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Rachel Hoover 650-604-0643
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
rachel.hoover@nasa.gov
2010-420
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Rachel Hoover 650-604-0643
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
rachel.hoover@nasa.gov
2010-420
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