Two years from now, Mars will be receiving Christmas gifts from the Earth – a whole fleet of spacecraft. The crafts are gifts from different nations, and will share communications channels to solve a problem which will intensify as Mars exploration gets on track: how to relay the data back to Earth gathered by many different missions. The first will arrive just before Christmas of 2003: the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and its lander, Beagle 2. The New Year will bring with it the Japanese ISAS’s Nozomi and NASA’s two Rovers. These will join NASA’s Mars Odyssey, which arrived on Mars last October and will still be operating.
December 19th, 2001
All-Terrain Rovers May Scale Mars’ Cliffs
NASA researchers are developing new prototype robots that can drive up steep hills and descend almost-vertical cliffs. Working alone or as a team, these autonomous robotic explorers may go where no rover has gone before — the cliffs of Mars. Recent Mars Global Surveyor images suggest water outflows near cliff edges and the possibility of rich water-borne mineral deposits that extend all the way to the cliff base. “We know that some of the most exciting Mars science and history will be in very rough, currently inaccessible terrain. Getting to those hard-to-reach spots — navigating and exploring them — will require altogether new types of robotic vehicles,” said Dr. Paul Schenker, supervisor of the Mechanical and Robotics Technologies Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and principal investigator for the All-Terrain Explorer.
December 15th, 2001
Vangelis: Music for the Mars Odyssey Mission
The music on this web site was created by Vangelis, as art of a longer composition that he calls “Mythodea: Music for NASA’s Mars Odyssey Mission.” Mars Odyssey team members wanted to know more, so we asked Vangelis a few questions about his personal connection to Mars and music.
November 19th, 2001
Machinists to the Stars
It’s the middle of the night at JPL, and the usual dozens of deer are on their nightly foraging rounds across the campus. Mars is up. So is the Moon. And so are nine machinists in the lab’s high-precision fabrication shop, working the second shift that ends between midnight and 3 a.m. They are part of the round-the-clock team turning out odd-shaped pieces of metal that will become robots destined for Mars.
November 13th, 2001
Mars Odyssey Enters Main Aerobreaking Phase
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft has now entered the main aerobraking phase of the mission. “The initial phase of aerobraking has gone exceedingly well. By skimming through the upper reaches of the Mars atmosphere during each orbit, we have reduced our orbital period by more than three hours in the past two weeks,” said David A. Spencer, the Odyssey mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Odyssey’s orbital period, the time required for the spacecraft to complete one revolution in its orbit around Mars, is currently 15 hours.
November 9th, 2001
NASA Selects 10 Investigations for 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
NASA today announced the selection of 10 scientific investigations as part of the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The 2005 mission will carry six primary instruments that will greatly enhance the search for evidence of water, take images of objects about the size of a beach ball, and search for future landing sites on the martian surface. The investigations selected include two principal investigator instrument investigations and eight facility team leader or member investigations.
November 1st, 2001
Porkchop is the First Menu Item on a Trip to Mars
Ancient cultures looked to the patterns of tea leaves or animal entrails to divine the course of the future. At JPL, the course of a future Mars mission can be found in a porkchop. Porkchop plot, that is. In the sometimes peculiar vocabulary of JPL mission designers, that nickname describes the porkchop-shaped, computer-generated, contour plots that display the launch date and arrival date characteristics of an interplanetary flight path for a given launch opportunity to Mars or any other planet. Developing a porkchop plot is the first thing on the menu when mission designers are scoping out an interplanetary voyage. This is the sort of task accomplished by engineers in JPL’s Navigation and Mission Design Section, whose unique, high-caliber expertise is signified by its recognition as NASA Center of Excellence.
October 31st, 2001
Mars Odyssey’s First Look at Mars Is All Treat, No Trick
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey gave mission managers a real treat this Halloween with its first look at the red planet. It’s a thermal infrared image of the martian southern hemisphere that captures the south polar carbon dioxide ice cap at a temperature of about minus 120 C (minus 184 F). The image, taken as part of the calibration and testing process for the instrument, shows the nighttime temperatures of Mars, demonstrating the “night-vision” capability of the camera system to observe Mars even when the surface is in darkness.
October 29th, 2001
‘Live From Mars’ Webcast On October 30
Tune in Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 10am Pacific time for “Live from Mars,” an educational program airing on NASA TV and many PBS stations nationwide. The program, also being webcast from JPL, will explain Mars Odyssey’s orbit insertion and its future science mission. Odyssey team members will also discuss how this mission fits in with NASA’s larger Mars exploration program.
October 29th, 2001
NASA Bulldozer Rovers Could Get the Scoop on Mars
Tiny bulldozer rovers may some day dish up the dirt and pack it in on Mars. The scoop-and-dump design of a prototype bulldozer rover being developed by NASA engineers mimics that of a bulldozer and dump truck. Unlike a life-size bulldozer and dump truck, which can weigh several thousand pounds, these rovers are lightweight, intelligent and can work without an operator at the wheel. Yet they have the same capabilities, relative to their size, as their heavy-duty counterparts. Robotics engineers think the basic research on these bulldozing rovers may support future missions to look for life or to sustain a human presence.