Heading into a period of the Martian year prone to major dust storms, the team operating NASA’s twin Mars rovers is taking advantage of eye-in-the-sky weather reports.
On April 21, Mars will be at the closest point to the sun in the planet’s 23-month, elliptical orbit. One month later, the planet’s equinox will mark the start of summer in Mars’ southern hemisphere. This atmospheric-warming combination makes the coming weeks the most likely time of the Martian year for dust storms severe enough to minimize activities of the rovers.
“Since the rovers are solar powered, the dust in the atmosphere is extremely important to us,” said Bill Nelson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., chief of the engineering team for Spirit and Opportunity.
Mars Spacecraft Teams on Alert for Dust-Storm Season
Weather Movie, Mars South Polar Region, March-April 2009
This movie shows the southern high-latitudes region of Mars from March 19 through April 14, 2009, a period when regional dust storms occurred along the retreating edge of carbon-dioxide frost in the seasonal south polar cap. Compared with a full-hemisphere view, this view shows more details of where the dust clouds formed and how they moved around the planet.
The movie combines hundreds of images from the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Mars Science Laboratory Parachute Qualification Testing
The parachute for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory passed flight-qualification testing in March and April 2009 inside the world’s largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
In this image, an engineer is dwarfed by the parachute, the largest ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial flight. It is designed to survive deployment at Mach 2.2 in the Martian atmosphere, where it will generate up to 65,000 pounds of drag force.
The parachute, built by Pioneer Aerospace, South Windsor, Conn., has 80 suspension lines, measures more than 50 meters (165 feet) in length, and opens to a diameter of nearly 16 meters (51 feet).
Dawn on course for Mars Gravity Assist
Dawn continues on course for its pas de deux with Mars on February 17. The planet’s gravity will gracefully assist the spacecraft on its way to rendezvous with its intended celestial partners Vesta and Ceres in the more distant asteroid belt. Even the extraordinary capability of its ion propulsion system would not be sufficient for Dawn to complete its celestial dance without the help of Mars.
Next NASA Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2011
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars.
A launch date of October 2009 no longer is feasible because of testing and hardware challenges that must be addressed to ensure mission success. The window for a 2009 launch ends in late October. The relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to Mars only a few weeks every two years. The next launch opportunity after 2009 is in 2011.
“We will not lessen our standards for testing the mission’s complex flight systems, so we are choosing the more responsible option of changing the launch date,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Up to this point, efforts have focused on launching next year, both to begin the exciting science and because the delay will increase taxpayers’ investment in the mission. However, we’ve reached the point where we can not condense the schedule further without compromising vital testing.”
International Mars Scientists Gather in Williamsburg, Virginia
NASA Langley Research Center will play host the world’s leading Mars scientists in Williamsburg next week, marking the first time that this international workshop on the Mars atmosphere has been held in the United States.
The atmosphere of Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor holds some of the keys to unlocking the secrets of Mars’ history. Was the climate ever suitable for sustaining liquid water on the Mars surface, and possibly even life? Studying the Martian atmosphere also provides a point of comparison for learning more about Earth’s meteorology, improves knowledge for future robotic and human missions and aids Langley researchers working on the nuts and bolts of Mars missions: entry, descent and landing.
Astronauts To Vote From Space
In this day and age, people engage in their right to vote from all over the world. But this Nov. 4, few ballots will have traveled as far as those cast by two NASA astronauts.
Commander Edward Michael Fincke and Flight Engineer and Science Officer Greg Chamitoff are living and working onboard the International Space Station. Though they are 220 miles above Earth and orbiting at 17,500 miles per hour, they will still be able to participate in the upcoming election. A 1997 bill passed by Texas legislators sets up a technical procedure for astronauts — nearly all of whom live in Houston — to vote from space.
NASA Orbiter Provides Color Views of Mars Landing Site Candidates
Less than a year since beginning the prime science phase of its mission, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has passed a mission-success milestone for the amount of data returned.
The data-volume target of 26 terabytes, which was surpassed this week, is equivalent to about 5,000 CD-ROMs full and exceeds the total from all other current and past Mars missions combined. The biggest shares of the data come from two of the orbiter’s six science instruments: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. The high-resolution camera’s team of investigators, based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, today released 143 color images. The images reveal features as small as a desk. They are valuable to researchers studying possible landing sites for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, a mission launching in 2009 to deploy a long-distance rover carrying sophisticated science instruments on Mars.
Phoenix Launch Looking Good for Saturday
At the Phoenix prelaunch news conference, NASA’s Launch Director Chuck Dovale said the launch team is ready to go for Saturday’s early morning liftoff. Weather Officer Joel Tumbiolo reports favorable conditions for launch time, with only a 20 percent chance of weather preventing liftoff. The forecast calls for scattered clouds, light ground and upper-level winds, and good visibility.
The launch preparations got back on track after a one-day delay because of severe weather in the vicinity of the launch pad on Tuesday that prevented the Delta II launch team from completing the fueling of the rocket’s second stage.
The Phoenix Mars lander’s assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.
Mars Exploration Rover Status Report: Concern Increasing About Opportunity
Rover engineers are growing increasingly concerned about the temperature of vital electronics on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity while the rover stays nearly inactive due to a series of dust storms that has lasted for more than a month.
Dust in the atmosphere and dust settling onto Opportunity’s solar panels challenges the ability of the solar panels to convert sunlight into enough electricity to supply the rover’s needs. The most recent communication from Opportunity, received Monday, July 30, indicates that sunlight over the rover’s Meridiani Planum location remains only slightly less obscured than during the dustiest days Opportunity survived in mid-July. With dust now accumulating on the solar panels, the rover is producing barely as much energy as it is using in a very-low-power regimen it has been following since July 18, 2007.