Future of Flagship Mars Mission Up In the Air
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Will NASA's flagship mission to Mars fly next year?
The space agency could decide as early as Friday whether to cancel, delay or proceed with plans to launch a nuclear-powered, SUV-size rover to the red planet.
NASA has already sunk $1.5 billion into the Mars Science Laboratory, which is pricier than expected. The mega-rover will roam the surface and drill into rocks for clues to whether the planet ever possessed an environment capable of supporting primitive life.
More: http://www.space.com/news/ap-081007-marsrover-woes.html
NASA's plans for a huge, nuclear powered laser-toting robot tank to succeed the present rovers on the surface of Mars have hit budget problems, according to reports.
The Mars Science Laboratory mission is currently planned by the space agency to lift off late next year and reach the Red Planet in the autumn of 2010, there to spend a full Martian year (almost two terrestrial ones) seeking out signs of life.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/07/new_mars_rover_snags/
Nasa is pushing ahead with plans to launch its next Mars mission in 2009, but acknowledges that extra funds are required to make it happen.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be the biggest planetary rover yet; it will be the size of a Mini Cooper.
Engineers are grappling with a number of technical challenges, such as the complexity of the motors that will drive the vehicle across the surface.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7664965.stm
NASA's plans to land a large nuclear-powered robotic tank on Mars are back on track, with the first section of its "sky crane" hovering lander module delivered from the makers and funding problems ironed out.
US aerospace titan Lockheed Martin announced yesterday that they had shipped the "backshell" for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, the top half of the tin in which the rover will fly through space.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/17/nasa_msl_approved/
The US space agency (Nasa) has delayed the launch of its Mars Science Laboratory rover mission.
MSL was scheduled to fly next year, but the mission has been dogged by testing and hardware problems.
The rover's launch would now be postponed until late 2011, agency officials said.
The mission is using innovative technologies to explore whether microbial life could ever have existed on the Red Planet.
The delay could add $400m to the price tag, which is likely to top $2bn.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7765818.stm
The parachute for NASA's massive Mars Science Laboratory has been cleared for flight after it was put to the test in the world's largest wind tunnel.
The giant parachute is the largest ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial flight and 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 when the new Mars Science Laboratory eventually lands.
The parachute was tested in the wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., which is big enough to house a Boeing 737. An image of the testing shows an engineer dwarfed by the massive parachute.
More: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090416-msl-parachute.html (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090416-msl-parachute.html)
It weighs almost a tonne, has cost more than $2bn and, in 2013, it will be lowered on to the surface of Mars with a landing system that has never been tried before.
The Mars Science Laboratory will "revolutionise investigations in science on other planets", says Doug McCuistion, director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme.
It will, he says, lay the foundations for future missions that will eventually bring pieces of the Red Planet back home to Earth.
"The ability to put a metric tonne on the surface... gives us the capability to undertake sample collection," says Dr McCuistion. "To collect and launch samples back into orbit will require that size of a vehicle."
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8509080.stm
NASA's next red planet probe, the Mars Science Laboratory – now dubbed Curiosity – has been years in development and overcome numerous hurdles. Now engineers are taking a close look at the car-sized rover's nuclear power plant.
Engineers preparing the Curiosity rover for its planned launch in 2011 found a slightly faster than expected degradation rate in the rover's multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or MMRTG for short.
The MMRTG is designed to enhance the rover's range and operability and lifetime on the red planet. The unit uses some 10 pounds (4.8 kg) of plutonium dioxide, mostly plutonium-238, as a heat source.
More: Curiosity (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/mars-science-lab-rover-power-100331.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+spaceheadlines+(SPACE.com+Headline+Feed))
Video: Video (http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=SP_100329_TWiS2-MarsLab&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+spaceheadlines+(SPACE.com+Headline+Feed))
Malin Space Science Systems, Inc. (MSSS), has delivered the last two of four science cameras it developed for the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory 2011 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover mission. These cameras, known collectively as the Mast Camera (or Mastcam—see Figure 1a and b) are designed to be the science imaging "workhorse" for the MSL rover. The cameras, capable of taking full color images analogous to those taken by consumer digital cameras, will be mounted on the rover's remote sensing mast, where they can be panned and tilted to provide image coverage around the rover, both near the rover and out to the horizon. One of the two Mastcams has a telephoto lens, providing the rover with a long-distance reconnoitering capability. Also delivered to JPL for MSL with the two Mastcams was the Digital Electronics Assembly (DEA), which compresses and buffers the images from the Mast Cameras, and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and Mars Descent Imager (MARDI), cameras also developed by MSSS for the MSL mission.
More: http://www.msss.com/news/index.php?id=14
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Gets New Steering System, Will be First Rover to Land Directly on its Wheels
The next Mars rover, Curiosity, has been outfitted with a new cutting-edge mobility system that's enough to make off-road enthusiasts drool with envy. The rover, which will carry ten times the payload mass of Spirit and Opportunity, is about the size of an SUV, and too heavy for an airbag landing.
It has a set of six wheels that are 20 inches in diameter -- larger than a car tire. Each wheel has its own motor, giving the rover independent six-wheel drive, and "cleats" that provide grip and help keep the rover from slipping when climbing over rocks or sand hills. The rover can also do swerving maneuvers and turn in place a full 360 degrees.
More on popsci.com (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-07/nasas-curiosity-mars-rover-gets-new-steering-system-will-be-first-land-directly-its-wheels)
US Martian nuke-truck launches without a hitch, but...
The rig is up. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission launched successfully and precisely on schedule – at 10:02am Eastern time on Saturday morning (3:02pm UTC), but within minutes ran into telemetry problems.
The MSL spacecraft, which carries within it NASA's big-as-a-Mini-Cooper, nuclear-powered, experiment-stuffed Curiosity rover, was lifted into orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Atlas V 541, sent skyward from Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, near NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The MSL escaped from Florida thanks to a liquid-fueled Atlas V launch vehicle that's 12.5 feet in diameter and 106.5 feet in length, and powered by a six-ton Russian-built RD-180 two-chamber engine that produces 860,200 pounds of thrust at sea level.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/26/nasa_msl_launch/