The Space Review: Mars lodging and ground transportation

The Space Review: Mars lodging and ground transportation

The Space Review: Is there a business case for Mars?

The Space Review: Is there a business case for Mars?

Tragic Story of the BEST Plane EVER MADE - Rockwell-MBB X-31 Thrust Vect...

NASA Flight Program Tests Mars Lander System

NEWS | OCTOBER 4, 2016

NASA Flight Program Tests Mars Lander Vision System

A prototype of the Lander Vision System for NASA's Mars 2020 mission was tested in this Dec. 9, 2014, flight of a Masten Space Systems "Xombie" vehicle at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Image Credit: NASA Photo/Tom Tschida
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NASA tested new "eyes" for its next Mars rover mission on a rocket built by Masten Space Systems in Mojave, California, thanks in part to NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, or FOP.

The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is leading development of the Mars 2020 rover and its Lander Vision System, or LVS. In 2014, the prototype vision system launched 1,066 feet (325 meters) into the air aboard Masten's rocket-powered "Xombie" test platform and helped guide the rocket to a precise landing at a predesignated target. LVS flew as part of a larger system of experimental landing technologies called the Autonomous Descent and Ascent Powered-flight Testbed, or ADAPT.

LVS, a camera-based navigation system, photographs the terrain beneath a descending spacecraft and matches it with onboard maps allowing the craft to detect its location relative to landing hazards, such as boulders and outcroppings.

The system can then direct the craft toward a safe landing at its primary target site or divert touchdown toward better terrain if there are hazards in the approaching target area. Image matching is aided by an inertial measurement unit that monitors orientation.

The Flight Opportunities Program funded the Masten flight tests under the Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program obtains commercial suborbital space launch services to pursue science, technology and engineering to mature technology relevant to NASA's pursuit of space exploration. The program nurtures the emerging suborbital space industry and allows NASA to focus on deep space.

Andrew Johnson, principal investigator in development of the Lander Vision System development, said the tests built confidence that the vision system will enable Mars 2020 to land safely.

"By providing funding for flight tests, FOP motivated us to build guidance, navigation and control payloads for testing on Xombie," Johnson said. "In the end we showed a closed loop pinpoint landing demo that eliminated any technical concerns with flying the Lander Vision System on Mars 2020."

According to "Lander Vision System for Safe and Precise Entry Descent and Landing," a 2012 abstract co-authored by Johnson for a Mars exploration workshop, LVS enables a broad range of potential landing sites for Mars missions.

Typically, Mars landers have lacked the ability to analyze and react to hazards, the abstract says. To avoid hazards, mission planners selected wide-open landing sites with mostly flat terrain. As a result, landers and rovers were limited to areas with relatively limited geological features, and were unable to access many sites of high scientific interest with more complex and hazardous surface morphology. LVS will enable safe landing at these scientifically compelling Mars landing sites.

An LVS-equipped mission allows for opportunities to land within more challenging environments and pursue new discoveries about Mars. With LVS baselined for inclusion on Mars 2020, the researchers are now focused on building the flight system ahead of its eventual role on the Red Planet.

To learn more about NASA's flight opportunities program, visit:

https://flightopportunities.nasa.gov/

To read more about NASA's Mars 2020 rover, visit:

http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

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Mars Curiosity Rover Begins Next Mars Chapter

NEWS | OCTOBER 3, 2016

NASA's Curiosity Rover Begins Next Mars Chapter

This September 2016 self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Quela" drilling location in the scenic "Murray Buttes" area on lower Mount Sharp. The panorama was stitched together from multiple images taken by the MAHLI camera at the end of the rover's arm. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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After collecting drilled rock powder in arguably the most scenic landscape yet visited by a Mars rover, NASA's Curiosity mobile laboratory is driving toward uphill destinations as part of its two-year mission extension that commenced Oct. 1.

The destinations include a ridge capped with material rich in the iron-oxide mineral hematite, about a mile-and-a-half (two-and-a-half kilometers) ahead, and an exposure of clay-rich bedrock beyond that.

These are key exploration sites on lower Mount Sharp, which is a layered, Mount-Rainier-size mound where Curiosity is investigating evidence of ancient, water-rich environments that contrast with the harsh, dry conditions on the surface of Mars today.

"We continue to reach higher and younger layers on Mount Sharp," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Even after four years of exploring near and on the mountain, it still has the potential to completely surprise us."

Hundreds of photos Curiosity took in recent weeks amid a cluster of mesas and buttes of diverse shapes are fresh highlights among the more than 180,000 images the rover has taken since landing on Mars in August 2012. Newly available vistas include the rover's latest self-portraitfrom the color camera at the end of its arm and a scenic panorama from the color camera at the top of the mast.

"Bidding good-bye to 'Murray Buttes,' Curiosity's assignment is the ongoing study of ancient habitability and the potential for life," said Curiosity Program Scientist Michael Meyer at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "This mission, as it explores the succession of rock layers, is reading the 'pages' of Martian history -- changing our understanding of Mars and how the planet has evolved. Curiosity has been and will be a cornerstone in our plans for future missions."

The component images of the self-portrait were taken near the base of one of the Murray Buttes, at the same site where the rover used its drill on Sept. 18 to acquire a sample of rock powder. An attempt to drill at this site four days earlier had halted prematurely due to a short-circuit issue that Curiosity had experienced previously, but the second attempt successfully reached full depth and collected sample material. After departing the buttes area, Curiosity delivered some of the rock sample to its internal laboratory for analysis.

This latest drill site -- the 14th for Curiosity -- is in a geological layer about 600 feet (180 meters) thick, called the Murray formation. Curiosity has climbed nearly half of this formation's thickness so far and found it consists primarily of mudstone, formed from mud that accumulated at the bottom of ancient lakes. The findings indicate that the lake environment was enduring, not fleeting. For roughly the first half of the new two-year mission extension, the rover team anticipates investigating the upper half of the Murray formation.

"We will see whether that record of lakes continues further," Vasavada said. "The more vertical thickness we see, the longer the lakes were present, and the longer habitable conditions existed here. Did the ancient environment change over time? Will the type of evidence we've found so far transition to something else?"

The "Hematite Unit" and "Clay Unit" above the Murray formation were identified from Mars orbiter observations before Curiosity's landing. Information about their composition, from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, made them high priorities as destinations for the rover mission. Both hematite and clay typically form in wet environments.

Vasavada said, "The Hematite and the Clay units likely indicate different environments from the conditions recorded in older rock beneath them and different from each other. It will be interesting to see whether either or both were habitable environments."

NASA approved Curiosity's second extended mission this summer on the basis of plans presented by the rover team. Additional extensions for exploring farther up Mount Sharp may be considered in the future. The Curiosity mission has already achieved its main goal of determining whether the landing region ever offered environmental conditions that would have been favorable for microbial life, if Mars has ever hosted life. The mission found evidence of ancient rivers and lakes, with a chemical energy source and all of the chemical ingredients necessary for life as we know it.

The mission is also monitoring the modern environment of Mars, including natural radiation levels. Along with other robotic missions to the Red Planet, it is an important piece of NASA'sJourney to Mars, leading toward human crew missions in the 2030s. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate and built the project's Curiosity rover. For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

News Media Contact

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1077
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov 

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