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Missions to Mars


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First Mars mission of this year - UAE's Hope - is set to enter Mars' orbit tomorrow, if everything goes well. Fingers crossed! 

A day after that, Tianwen 1, China's first mission to Mars, will arrive too. They are also carrying a rover, but will first orbit the planet for a few months before attempting the landing. 

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February 8, 2021

Tricky Terrain: Helping to Assure a Safe Rover Landing

download.thumb.png.065670fc656724784e9907be25eb60a9.png


How two new technologies will help Perseverance, NASA’s most sophisticated rover yet, touch down onto the surface of Mars this month.


After a nearly seven-month journey to Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is slated to land at the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater Feb. 18, 2021, a rugged expanse chosen for its scientific research and sample collection possibilities.

But the very features that make the site fascinating to scientists also make it a relatively dangerous place to land – a challenge that has motivated rigorous testing here on Earth for the lander vision system (LVS) that the rover will count on to safely touch down.

“Jezero is 28 miles wide, but within that expanse, there are a lot of potential hazards the rover could encounter: hills, rock fields, dunes, the walls of the crater itself, to name just a few,” said Andrew Johnson, principal robotics systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “So, if you land on one of those hazards, it could be catastrophic to the whole mission.”

Enter Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN), the mission-critical technology at the heart of the LVS that captures photos of the Mars terrain in real-time and compares them with onboard maps of the landing area, autonomously directing the rover to divert around known hazards and obstacles as needed.

FULL REPORT

 

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On 27/01/2021 at 11:57, Carnivore Chris said:

There's got to be life somewhere, without a doubt. 

Past life on Mars is also likely, it certainly looks like a planet that potentially once held life.

 

Speaking of space, what would you say this was? 

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I took it the other night. You always see various planets and bright stars at this time of the year.

 

 

On 27/01/2021 at 13:58, nudge said:

Could be Spica! It's a blueish star (actually two stars, but indistinguishable) Virgo constellation, very bright, and should be seen in the east-southeast at this time of the year. 

@nudge could be right, that could be Spica which is in the Virgo Constellation, I am glad she put me onto this Stellarium Mobile/Laptop Star Map installation it completely has me gobsmacked with so much information on it from the heavens above.

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10 minutes ago, nudge said:

That's 2 out of 2 😎 Landing expected in mid May/June. 

 

Hopefully, many more to come from other nations around the world to me, Space is a priority than bloody wars, guns, bullets and who has the biggest atomic bomb here on mother Earth,

Earth won't last forever and the sun will die and shrink into a white dwarf and that's why the Space Race should be a priority and hopefully, I can be reborn in another life and time where space travel from planet to planet is a way of life...better put the whisky away now :drunk:  xD

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CaSSIS mission: The camera capturing Mars' craters and canyons

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It is a busy time for Mars at the moment.

This month the Red Planet entered its new year, what is known as Year 36, and it has not long been overtaken by Earth in its orbit of the Sun.

The distance between Earth and Mars constantly changes because of their different speeds around the Sun, therefore the optimum launch window for missions is just once every 26 months when the planets come closest together.

Many are anticipating the touchdown of Nasa's Perseverance rover - the most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to land on a planet - on 18 February.

However, the Red Planet is already being closely observed.

Since its launch in 2016 and its subsequent orbit insertion around Mars, an instrument named the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) has been used to enhance scientists' knowledge of the planet's surface.

The camera is travelling with the  European Space Agency's (Esa) Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is studying methane and other rare gases in the Martian atmosphere.

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There's a new paper in Frontier in Microbiology which shows that cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) can successfully grow in Martian atmospheric conditions, using only gases, water and other nutrients found locally on Mars. 

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/f-bff021221.php

This is quite fascinating, and with further reasearch, could potentially be viable option for terraforming in the future.

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Perseverance rover: Nasa robot heading for a bulls-eye landing

The American space agency says its Perseverance rover is lined up perfectly for its landing on Mars.

The robot is heading for a touchdown on Thursday in a crater called Jezero just north of the planet's equator.

Its mission objectives will be to search for signs of past life and to collect and prepare rock samples for return to Earth in the 2030s.

Engineers told reporters that as things stand they don't plan to make any more changes to the robot's trajectory.

All the navigation data indicates it is right on track to intersect Mars at the intended moment in time and space.

"We still have the ability to do another manoeuvre if we need to, but we don't expect we'll have to," Jennifer Trosper, Nasa's deputy project manager for Perseverance, told BBC News.

Tuesday saw Perseverance duck under half-a-million km left to travel.

FULL REPORT

 

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February 16, 2021

The Mars Relay Network Connects Us to NASA's Martian Explorers

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A tightly choreographed dance between NASA’s Deep Space Network and Mars orbiters will keep the agency’s Perseverance in touch with Earth during landing and beyond.


When NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover touches down with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, they won’t be alone. From orbit, two robotic buddies will be playing a special role in the event by checking in on the mission’s vital signs from the moment Perseverance enters the atmosphere to long after it makes its first tracks on the Martian surface.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter are a part of the Mars Relay Network, a constellation of spacecraft that serves as a lifeline to the current surface missions on Mars – NASA’s Curiosity rover and InSight lander.

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