Mars 2020 mission is to include part I: sample return

[NSEP]

Tech Insider made it a video:

 

[PB666]

27 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Tech Insider made it a video:

 

Why are they showing the curiosity rover?

[NSEP]

57 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Why are they showing the curiosity rover?

Dunno, the Mars 2020 rover looks pretty simulair to curiosity.

Edited December 10, 2017 by NSEP

[PB666]

2 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Dunno, the Mars 2020 rover looks pretty simulair to curiosity.

Wait, curiosity had problem with its wheels, they fall apart, weren't they going to redesign them?

[NSEP]

36 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Wait, curiosity had problem with its wheels, they fall apart, weren't they going to redesign them?

Yeah, maybe they didn't have the stock footage of the 2020 rover yet with new wheels so they either used the animation before the wheel redesign or they decided to flip the table and go for Curiosity instead.

[Pwnstarr]

On 12/9/2017 at 1:15 PM, Green Baron said:

Also, according to the Nasa 2020 site, no sample or probe will return to earth but a cache with selected samples set aside on the Marsian surface. Future missions can return these samples then.

So, Brotoro was imo absolutely right when he said that they obviously do not know what they are talking about.

Confirm, I attended the Mars Society conference a couple years ago where a NASA planetary scientist said just that. 

Robot will collect samples and store them to give humans more time to argue about how to send a later human/robot mission to retrieve them. 

Edited December 10, 2017 by Pwnstarr

[PB666]

12 minutes ago, Pwnstarr said:

Confirm, I attended the Mars Society conference a couple years ago where a NASA planetary scientist said just that. 

Robot will collect samples and store them to give humans more time to argue about how to send a later human/robot mission to retrieve them. 

They have to have some kind of plan up their sleeve, they must already have a solution on the table, they are probably hashing out the details. We know for sure, though 2020 will not bring the return vehicle, it will require 4 more years.

They don't even have to get it into a transfer,  just get it high enough for a fly-by to pick up and carry back..

[DerekL1963]

17 hours ago, PB666 said:

They have to have some kind of plan up their sleeve, they must already have a solution on the table, they are probably hashing out the details.

They don't.  The theory is that once the samples are gathered, that fact can be used to justify funding for the next stage (getting them to orbit).  Once they're in orbit, that serves as justification for going out and fetching them from orbit...  lather, rinse, repeat.

It's all an attempt to hide the cost and complexity of a sample return mission.  Rather childish really. 

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

They don't.  The theory is that once the samples are gathered, that fact can be used to justify funding for the next stage (getting them to orbit).  Once they're in orbit, that serves as justification for going out and fetching them from orbit...  lather, rinse, repeat.

It's all an attempt to hide the cost and complexity of a sample return mission.  Rather childish really. 

Have you looked at how our government is run lately?

Edited December 11, 2017 by PB666

[Pwnstarr]

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

They don't.  The theory is that once the samples are gathered, that fact can be used to justify funding for the next stage (getting them to orbit).  Once they're in orbit, that serves as justification for going out and fetching them from orbit...  lather, rinse, repeat.

It's all an attempt to hide the cost and complexity of a sample return mission.  Rather childish really. 

 

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Have you looked at how our government is run lately?

I suspect it's exactly this. Easier to garner political will to fund incremental missions than one big commitment up front.

Edited December 11, 2017 by Pwnstarr

[DerekL1963]

11 minutes ago, Pwnstarr said:

I suspect it's exactly this. Easier to garner political will to fund incremental missions than one big commitment up front.

That's the thing - it's not an incremental mission.  It's a series of tenuously connected missions.  The two are not the same, and the latter doesn't generate the sense of "urgency" the former does.  It's "clandestine" nature is more likely to trigger backlash than funding (IMO).

The upshot of this is that they literally have no idea how to retrieve the sample, how to get them into orbit, how to recover them on orbit, and finally how to return them to and recover them at Earth.  All of these things are impacted by the design of the 2020 Rover...  Or to put it simply, design decisions are being made today with no clear idea how they'll constrain future missions that are currently barely BOTE.

[DAL59]

4 hours ago, Pwnstarr said:

 

I suspect it's exactly this. Easier to garner political will to fund incremental missions than one big commitment up front.

Zubrin has calculated that the same launcher could easily send a slightly smaller rover and a return vehicle capable of going all the way back to Earth.  

[Green Baron]

10 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Zubrin has calculated that the same launcher could easily send a slightly smaller rover and a return vehicle capable of going all the way back to Earth.  

I can calculate that too ... and probably everybody else here :-)

[SuperFastJellyfish]

The parachute is ready for Mars.  Not super exciting, but I haven't heard anything about this mission in awhile.

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8380/third-aspire-test-confirms-mars-2020-parachute-a-go/

Quote

On Oct. 3, NASA's Mars 2020 mission management and members of its Entry, Descent, and Landing team met at JPL in Pasadena, California, and determined that the strengthened parachute had passed its tests and was ready for its Martian debut.

"Mars 2020 will be carrying the heaviest payload yet to the surface of Mars, and like all our prior Mars missions, we only have one parachute and it has to work," said John McNamee, project manager of Mars 2020 at JPL. "The ASPIRE tests have shown in remarkable detail how our parachute will react when it is first deployed into a supersonic flow high above Mars. And let me tell you, it looks beautiful."

The 67,000-pound (37,000-kilogram) load was the highest ever survived by a supersonic parachute. That's about an 85-percent higher load than what scientists would expect the Mars 2020 parachute to encounter during its deployment in Mars' atmosphere.

 

 

[James Kerman]

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is beginning aero-braking operations to support Mars 2020.

Image Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Kel Elkins and Dan Gallagher

 

Quote

NASA's 4-year-old atmosphere-sniffing Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission is embarking on a new campaign today to tighten its orbit around Mars. The operation will reduce the highest point of the MAVEN spacecraft's elliptical orbit from 3,850 to 2,800 miles (6,200 to 4,500 kilometers) above the surface and prepare it to take on additional responsibility as a data-relay satellite for NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which launches next year.

"The MAVEN spacecraft has done a phenomenal job teaching us how Mars lost its atmosphere and providing other important scientific insights on the evolution of the Martian climate," said Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. "Now we're recruiting it to help NASA communicate with our forthcoming Mars rover and its successors."

While MAVEN's new orbit will not be drastically shorter than its present orbit, even this small change will significantly improve its communications capabilities. "It's like using your cell phone," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The closer you are to a cell tower, the stronger your signal."

A strong telecommunications antenna signal is not the only benefit of a tighter orbit. Coming in nearly 1,000 miles (about 1,500 kilometers) closer also will allow the MAVEN orbiter to circle Mars more frequently - 6.8 orbits per Earth day versus 5.3 previously - and thus communicate with the Mars rovers more frequently. While not conducting relay communications, MAVEN will continue to study the structure and composition of the upper atmosphere of Mars. "We're planning a vigorous science mission far into the future," Jakosky said.

The MAVEN mission was designed to last two years in space, but the spacecraft is still operating normally. With the mission managing its fuel to last through 2030, NASA plans to use MAVEN's relay capability as long as possible. The MAVEN orbiter carries an ultra-high-frequency radio transceiver - similar to transceivers carried on other Mars orbiters - that allows it to relay data between Earth and rovers or landers on Mars. The MAVEN spacecraft already has served occasionally as NASA's communication liaison with the Curiosity rover.

Over the next few months, MAVEN engineers will use a navigation technique known as aerobraking - like applying the brakes on a car - to take advantage of the drag of the Red Planet's upper atmosphere to slow the spacecraft down gradually, orbit by orbit. This is the same drag you would feel if you put your hand out of the window of a moving car.

Based on the tracking of the spacecraft by the navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado, engineers will begin carefully lowering the lowest part of the spacecraft's orbit into the Martian upper atmosphere over the next couple of days by firing its thrusters. The spacecraft will circle Mars at this lower altitude about 360 times over the next 2.5 months, slowing down slightly with each pass through the atmosphere. While it may seem like a time-consuming process, aerobraking is the most efficient way to change the spacecraft's trajectory, said Jakosky: "The effect is the same as if we fired our thrusters a little bit on every orbit, but this way, we use very little fuel."

Fortunately, the team has ample experience operating the spacecraft at these lower altitudes. On nine previous occasions throughout the mission, MAVEN engineers have dipped the orbiter into the same altitude targets for aerobraking to take measurements of the Martian atmosphere. As a result of these "deep dips" and other measurements, NASA has learned that solar wind and radiation had stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, changing the planet's early climate from warm and wet to the dry environment we see today. MAVEN also discovered two new types of auroras on Mars and the presence of charged metal atoms in its upper atmosphere that tell us that a lot of debris is hitting Mars that may affect its climate.

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder. The university provided two science instruments and leads science operations, as well as education and public outreach, for the mission. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project and provided two science instruments for the mission. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. The University of California at Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory also provided four science instruments for the mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, provides navigation and Deep Space Network support, as well as the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7331

 

[johnmorris]

9 hours ago, James Kerman said:

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is beginning aero-braking operations to support Mars 2020.

Image Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Kel Elkins and Dan Gallagher

 

I'm actually wondering why they wanted to start the colonization of the Solar System with Mars and not with the Moon. I mean it's easier to get to the Moon, and they can test all the systems with creating a settlement on the nearby satellite.

Edited February 12, 2019 by johnmorris

[Green Baron]

Colonization or settlements are not a thing.

Mars 2020 is a rover mission in preparation. Its goals are to look for signs of life and eventually gather data in preparation of possible future human visits. The still working MAVEN apparently can be used as a communication relay for years, besides its primary use to explore the exchange between space and the Marsian upper atmosphere. MAVEN has lots of fuel left.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/overview/

https://mars.nasa.gov/maven/

 

 

Edited February 12, 2019 by Green Baron

[James Kerman]

6 minutes ago, johnmorris said:

I'm actually wondering why they wanted to start the colonization of the Solar System with Mars and not with the Moon. I mean it's easier to get to the Moon, and they can test all the systems with creating a settlement on the nearby satellite.

I'm not sure that NASA has ever proposed a colony on Mars, besides some early, optimistic ideas that never got past the paper stage (I might be wrong about this but someone will correct me if it is so).  I personally think that an outpost (as opposed to a colony) on the Moon could be useful to explore some of the issues involved in colonizing any body in the solar system.  We have a cool thread on Mars colonization that explains some of the many problems any colony is likely to encounter if you would like to read more about it.

 

[johnmorris]

15 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Colonization or settlements are not a thing.

Mars 2020 is a rover mission in preparation. Its goals are to look for signs of life and eventually gather data in preparation of possible future human visits. The still working MAVEN apparently can be used as a communication relay for years, besides its primary use to explore the exchange between space and the Marsian upper atmosphere. MAVEN has lots of fuel left.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/overview/

https://mars.nasa.gov/maven/

 

 

Wow, thanks for the provided information. I was actually referring to Elon Musk's plans about Mars colonization. However, I examine Mars 2020 for some valuable information. Thanks again.

10 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

I'm not sure that NASA has ever proposed a colony on Mars, besides some early, optimistic ideas that never got past the paper stage (I might be wrong about this but someone will correct me if it is so).  I personally think that an outpost (as opposed to a colony) on the Moon could be useful to explore some of the issues involved in colonizing any body in the solar system.  We have a cool thread on Mars colonization that explains some of the many problems any colony is likely to encounter if you would like to read more about it.

 

Thanks James. As I replied to @Green Baron I was actually thinking of SpaceX and Elon Musk. And I'm totally agree with you about the outpost on the Moon.

[StrandedonEarth]

#Mars2020 has a name....

It seems quite likely  it will have the nickname "Percy"

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

It seems quite likely  it will have the nickname "Percy"

Or perhaps "Vera". Like Jayne's gun in Firefly.

[kerbiloid]

Perver... wut?

Well, maybe let it be just Percy.

[Wjolcz]

So how exactly will this new rover search for ancient life?

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

On Mars you don't search for ancient life. The ancient life is searching for you.

 

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

So how exactly will this new rover search for ancient life?

It will open up a Home Town Buffet and advertise an early bird special.