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Mars Exploration 1: Unmanned Missions (Probes; Rovers; etc.)

intaglio said:
Have you met many geologists? I knew one once that got excited by mud
US space agency Nasa says one of its unmanned rover vehicles on Mars has drilled into a rock, the first time this has been done by a robot vehicle.

Nasa scientists hailed the drilling of the hole, which is 45.5mm in diameter, as a significant achievement.

"I didn't think that it would cut this deep," Steve Gorevan, the scientist in charge of rock abrasion tools on the rovers, told the AFP news agency.

"In fact, when we saw virtually a complete circle, I was thrilled beyond anything I could have ever dreamed."

:rolleyes: :D
 
They are drilling hols that are not complete circles

Goodness the technology is advanced, Next thing you know they'll find out that pi=3
 
Dark Detective said:
Nasa scientists hailed the drilling of the hole, which is 45.5mm in diameter, as a significant achievement.
The hole's 45.5mm in diameter, but what the quote negelcts to mention is that it took 2, or 3, hours to drill 2.7mm into the rock. Which may be basalt.

It makes you wonder why they bother?
 
Press Conference to Reveal Water Finds?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3524275.stm
Nasa to reveal Mars water secrets
"Significant findings" about water on Mars will be announced by the US space agency on Tuesday in Washington DC.
Nasa has called a press conference at which the lead scientist on its Red Planet rovers will reveal the mission's most important discovery to date.

The statement will centre on the rover Opportunity and its work on Meridiani Planum, a flat plain containing the iron-rich mineral grey haematite.

The rovers were sent to Mars to find evidence of past water environments.

Scientists hope that by confirming the planet was a wet world like Earth some time in its geologic history, they will establish that conditions were also suitable for life as well.

Most researchers now accept Mars retains significant amounts of water. Orbital observations show water-ice is locked up in the polar regions.


The two rovers, on the other hand, are operating nearer the equator on opposite sides of the Red Planet.
Spirit, which landed on 4 January, is in Gusev Crater, which may once have contained a large lake.

Opportunity touched down on 25 January in a small impact crater which immediately excited researchers because of the presence of a layered rock outcrop that could have been laid down in water.

Both rovers are equipped with cameras, spectrometers and tools to analyse rocks and soil.

The press briefing in Washington will be attended by Professor Steve Squyres, the Mars Exploration Rover Principal Investigator, from Cornell University, New York.

He will be joined on the panel by mission scientists Professor John Grotzinger, Dr Benton Clark and Dr Joy Crisp.

The regular rover briefings have been held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. It is an indication of the importance of the forthcoming statement that the conference has been moved to Nasa's headquarters on the East Coast.
 
They are going to announce they have found the original manuscripts for Percival Lowells `Occult Japan`??

Akenhatens mummy??

a small piece of oolithic limestone???
 
My money's on a large black monolith...

Steve.
 
evidence of water "unequivocally" shown

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3524275.stm

Mars rocks once 'water drenched'


The rocks are being studied intensively by Opportunity
Nasa says its Mars rover Opportunity has shown unequivocally that the Red Planet had the right conditions to support life some time in its history.
The rover has revealed the rocks at its landing site were once in contact with substantial amounts of liquid water.

"These rocks were modified in liquid water and may have been precipitated in water," said scientist Steve Squyres.

Opportunity has been studying the local geology at a location called Meridiani Planum since its landing on 25 January.

Professor Squyres, the principal investigator on the rover's science payload, said his team had been engaged in a fine analysis of a section layered bedrock at the landing site.

"For the last two weeks we've been attacking it with every piece of our hardware and the puzzle pieces have been falling into place," he told a special news conference at the US space agency's headquarters in Washington DC.

"Were these rocks acted upon, were they altered by liquid water? The answer to that question is, definitively, yes."

Rich in sulphur

He said there were several key lines of evidence to support the conclusion.

These included the rocks' physical appearance. Their cross-bedding, the presence of small spherules and indentations all pointed to water modification.

The rover's instruments also detected high levels of sulphate salts which on Earth would normally form in water or, after formation, be highly altered by long exposures to water.


Nasa has two rovers on opposite sides of Mars
"The only way you can form such large concentrations of salt is dissolve it in water and allow the water to evaporate," said mission scientist Dr Benton Clark.

In particular, the rover found jarosite, an iron sulphate mineral which suggests an acid-rich lake or hot-spring environment might have existed at Meridiani Planum.

"The purpose of this mission was to go to Mars and see if it had habitable environments," said Professor Squyres.

"We believe at this place on Mars for some period in time... this was a ground water environment that would have been suitable for life. That doesn't mean that life was there. We don't know that."

Rock return

The scientists still have to show the rocks were originally laid down by minerals precipitating out of solution at the bottom of a salty lake or sea - that they were formed like the water-derived sedimentary rocks found on Earth.

Nasa's scientists said it was not possible to say when the wet environment at Meridiani Planum existed.


Nasa believes the spherical granules have a watery origin
Neither the Opportunity rover, nor its twin, Spirit, is equipped to date rocks.

"The best way to get at the age is going to be to bring some of this stuff back," said Professor Squyres.

And Nasa officials believe a sample return mission should now be a priority.

"One of the pathways of exploration... is to undertake perhaps the most challenging robotic science mission we could imagine to another world - and that is to return pieces of Mars to Earth," said Dr Jim Garvin, the lead scientist for Mars and the Moon at the space agency's headquarters.

"These first results are a good compass point that says 'we know a good place go and get Mars, figure it out on site like we're doing and bring it home to all those [Earth] labs'."

He said a future mission could involve a rover that scoured the surface for interesting rocks which it then took back to a mothership for despatch to Earth.

Opportunity and Spirit are controlled by a team of scientists and engineers working out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Spirit touched down in Gusev Crater on the far side of Mars to Opportunity on 4 January. It is investigating an area which scientists think may once have held a lake.
 
I do hope they find proof of some kind of primative (or better) life as that will really wind-up the religious loonies.
 
I doubt they will notice a microbe, they are so very small.

But It would muck up the terraforming plans.
 
"I do hope they find proof of some kind of primative (or better) life as that will really wind-up the religious loonies."

I don't think it would have that effect. AFAIK, all the big religions accommodate life on other worlds, and some even insist on it.
 
I'd have settled for some sort of little scoop and conveyor belt affair, attached to a decent videocamera linked, optical, stereo, microscope affair. So they could have had a good look for micro fossil fragments.

I'm betting the quality of the ESA photo mapping project's got NASA slightly rattled. ;)
 
What's Orbiting Mars?

In this article on the practicality of using ion propulsion for space missions:

Story

Jeffery Bell makes the following very interesting statement:

"I learned this dismal fact some years ago when I found myself in charge of a team of bright engineers from a major aerospace corporation. Our job was to design an unmanned spacecraft which was intended to return a certain small object from a certain orbit around Mars."

Any thoughts on what the object might be?
 
Interesting. It may be that the work was just a concept study, and hence the scenario was just one that would both stress the concept, as well as show up advantages and disadvantages relative to other systems. The specific scenario chosen may be based on a hypothetical Mars sample return mission. (The "object" being the sample that has been collected from the Martian surface and delivered to orbit.)

Then again...
 
Sorry... I'm a bit slow.

Do you mean some sort of probe that, once landed, would take a sample and fire it back into orbit on another rocket?

Interesting....
 
By analogy with what was done for the Apollo missions, you don't carry all of your stuff to the surface only to have to bring it back to orbit again. The Apollo astronauts only took to the surface the equipment that they would need there, as well as a means to return to lunar orbit, so it might be plausible to use this as a model for a possible Martian sample return mission.

Then again, it could be something else. :)
 
Picking something up in orbit is much easier than landing and taking off again. I know that plans for mining on the Moon and/or Mars would involve firing cargo capsules from a railgun into orbit, where they would then be picked up by ships, or grabbed by an orbitting station which in turn would launch them to receiving stations at Earth.

This way, your ships only have to be equipped for spaceflight and not planetfall, which in turn makes them cheaper. Which means you can have more of them.
 
Fortis,

I considered the possibility of a study on sample return and that may be the case but a couple of things made me wonder:

1. Having a group work on it would be pretty expensive.

2. The complexity of the rendevous and docking process would require a lot of extra mass and the increased likelihood of failure would seem to argue for a direct return.

3. You would think he would have just said it was for a sample return if that is what it was.

tuckeg
 
Ah yes, but we know how people like to dress up language.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/science/19mars.html

Mars Rover Finds Mysterious Rocks and More Signs of Water
By KENNETH CHANG

Published: August 19, 2004


With one Mars rover climbing into the hills and the other descending deep into a crater, scientists yesterday reported the discovery of several mysterious rock structures along with yet more signs that Mars was once awash in water.

Both rovers, the Spirit and the Opportunity, have more than doubled their intended lifetimes of three months.

The extra time has allowed the Spirit, which is exploring the 95-mile-wide Gusev Crater, to reach hilly terrain about 1.5 miles from its landing site in search of exposed bedrock. Bedrock is more valuable for telling the geological history of a site than loose rocks and boulders that may have been carried there from elsewhere.

At a news conference yesterday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Dr. Steven W. Squyres, the mission's principal investigator, said the Spirit had now "arrived at one of the best exposures of bedrock that we have found."

Some parts of the bedrock appear "very clean and gray" while other parts are "light-toned and kind of crumbly and cruddy looking," Dr. Squyres said. The scientists hypothesize that the crumbly rock also started clean and gray, but underwent chemical transformations, perhaps from water.

"By looking at the change, you can really get a handle on what took place, what was the nature of the alteration," Dr. Squyres said. "It's going to take us another week, another two weeks, another three weeks to really work the story out, but it's starting to look intriguing."

The Opportunity, on the other side of the planet, had earlier found strong evidence of a past wet environment, but the Spirit had until now detected signs of only trace amounts of water at Gusev, which may have once been a lakebed. The exploration of Mars has focused on a search for water, because some scientists believe that Mars was warmer and wetter early in its history, perhaps allowing life to arise.

For the past two months, the Opportunity has slowly examined layers of sedimentary rocks within a 430-foot-wide crater nicknamed Endurance. In some of the lower, older rock layers, "you can actually see some little ripples preserved in here," Dr. Squyres said. "These are the signs of the action of the flow of liquid water across the surface."

Below the rippled layer, the appearance of the rocks changed markedly, even though the composition remained similar - evidence of different conditions further into the planet's past.

The Opportunity has found within Endurance the same spherical pebbles, nicknamed blueberries, that it has seen previously. But deep in the crater, the rover also found other, more reddish pebbles. "They're not at all like the berries," said Zoe Lerner, a graduate student at Cornell University who is working on the science team.

Up close, the reddish pebbles looked rough and varied widely in size and shape. More strangely, the scientists also saw pebbles that looked like blueberries coated with the coarse, reddish material. "We're not really sure what is going on here," Ms. Lerner said.

Another geological mystery is a rock, about three feet wide, that is "one of the strangest looking rocks we have seen on the surface of Mars," Dr. Squyres said. "It's sort of lumpy. It's sort of rounded. It doesn't look like anything we've seen anywhere."

The scientists hope they can solve that mystery when the Opportunity passes by the rock on its way out of Endurance crater.
 
British mars mission by 2009

British scientists and engineers are pushing for a new Beagle 2 mission to Mars by 2007, or 2009 at the latest. Although the first British attempt to land on another planet failed when the tiny spacecraft reached Mars on Christmas Day and fell silent, the Beagle team still believes it could work.
Colin Pillinger, the Open University scientist who dreamed up the venture in 1998 and pushed it to a £50m reality in five years, revealed yesterday that he had invited the US space agency Nasa to consider Beagle 2 as an instrument for its Martian mobile science laboratory in 2009.

"It could have worked. And it should have worked," he said. "It didn't work, and we don't know the reason why. But there is no reason to believe that there was any fault in the technology of this mission which wouldn't allow us to take it to Mars if the circumstances were right.

"We achieved 81% of the work of 20 months in this project. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason why we couldn't launch a demonstrator lander which carried the science of Beagle 2, and build it in time for a 2007 launch.
 
new mars data gives life clue

New data showing that patterns of water and methane in Mars' atmosphere overlap may have important implications for the idea that the planet could harbour life.

The finding comes from the Mars Express probe in orbit around the Red Planet.

If microbes are making methane seen in Mars' atmosphere, they would rely on water, so the association between the two has excited some researchers.

But other scientists have pointed out that this overlap could just as easily be explained by alternative processes.

ot all of these processes necessarily involve microbial life.

Dr Michael Mumma, an atmospheric scientist at the US space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, US, said one possibility was that methane molecules could be trapped in a water-ice matrix (methane hydrate) on Mars.

"If you happened to warm that beyond the liquidation temperature then you would free both methane and water together," he told BBC News Online.

"The origin of that methane could be [biological] or [non-biological] but it would clearly stem from an earlier time when water was abundant and methane hydrates could form."

Another possibility is that geothermal activity from underground heat sources on Mars generates methane from the oxidation of iron contained in hot basaltic rocks. This releases hydrogen which combines with carbon to form methane.

The detections have been made by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), a scientific instrument carried by Mars Express. Its principal investigator is Vittorio Formisano, director of research at the Institute of Interplanetary Space Physics in Rome, Italy.

The PFS is designed to determine the composition of the Martian atmosphere from the wavelengths of sunlight absorbed by molecules in it and from the infrared radiation they emit.

The scientists then analyse the "spectral lines" generated by the instrument. . . .
 
What happens if they discover a flint arrowhead (or even multicellular fossil?
 
Mars Express 'divining rod' to deploy



A "divining rod" to search for underground water on Mars will be deployed on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft early this spring, after a year of delays. The new deployment date for the radar antenna - to be announced within days - is likely to fall in April 2005.

Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding - or MARSIS - consists of wires strung inside three long fibreglass tubes. These will seek water - which might provide oases for life - as deep as several kilometres below the Martian surface.

The tubes, currently folded and stored onboard Mars Express, were originally scheduled for deployment in April 2004. But mission managers postponed the date when computer simulations showed that a similar antenna planned for launch later in 2005 could swing back and damage the spacecraft upon deployment. So the MARSIS team spent several months last autumn running vacuum-chamber tests of the antenna material and modelling the deployment on computers.

The research now reveals that there is indeed a "high likelihood" that one of the three tubes "will whip back and strike the spacecraft", says MARSIS manager William Johnson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. "But the antenna is quite light and flexible - about the diameter and strength of a toilet paper tube," he adds. "So the impact would most likely not cause any damage."

Centre of gravity
More worrisome than a direct hit is the small chance that a tube could get caught on the spacecraft or tangled up with itself. In that case, MARSIS would not work and could leave the spacecraft with a new and unanticipated centre of gravity, forcing mission managers to tweak how they control the probe. "There is some risk attached to this," Johnson told New Scientist.

But officials at the European Space Agency (ESA), which manages Mars Express, have apparently decided it is worth the risk and will soon announce a deployment date - anticipated for April 2005. They had earlier resolved to wait until at least March 2005 for deployment, when the spacecraft will spend less time swinging through the planet's shadow during each orbit. Such an "eclipse" requires Mars Express to rely on its battery power, which has the potential to fail.

The MARSIS experiment's own requirements also affect its deployment. The radar rods must be close to the planet to function - limiting its use to just 28 minutes in each 6-hour elliptical orbit. And it works best over the night side of Mars. That half-hour operational window is maximised in April, May and June, when the spacecraft's close passes occur over the planet's darkened northern latitudes.

Priority data
The three sections of the antenna - two of which are a remarkable 20 metres long, while the third measures 7 m - will each be deployed separately over the course of about two weeks. MARSIS team members will then have a further two weeks to organise their experiment in a "commissioning" phase, taking priority over the spacecraft's other six instruments in sending data back to Earth.

But the experiment's success is anything but certain. MARSIS works by sending out pulses of radio waves and analysing the time delay and strength of the waves that return. The theory is that some of the longer wavelength waves may penetrate Mars's porous rocky soil and bounce back when they encounter a transition between two materials with different electrical properties, such as an underground pool of water.

Similar radar experiments have been done on Earth, but over ice, where "usually you sort of know what to expect", says Johnson. That is not the case with Mars. "We don't even know if we're going to get an echo from the subsurface," he says. Johnson adds that any signal the team does get will be difficult to interpret, as waves that bounce back from the surface at large angles can mimic those that come from underground.

"It may be a dud. There may be nothing there," Johnson says. "But MARSIS has fantastic potential. It may tell us more than any other combination of instruments we've ever sent to Mars."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6974
 
Wasn't sure wether this went here or in the UFO section

UFO Spotted Over Mars - Kinda...
Posted on Friday, May 20 @ 03:10:39 PDT by JWSmythe

We're all familiar with blurry photographs of UFOs, but NASA have gone one better; the Mars Global Surveyor has photographed fellow satellite Mars Odyssey as it whizzed past. This is the first instance of one extraterrestrial satellite photographing another.



NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft appears twice in the same frame in this image from the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. The camera's successful imaging of Odyssey and of the European Space Agency's Mars Express in April 2005 produced the first pictures of any spacecraft orbiting a foreign planet taken by another spacecraft orbiting that planet.

Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey are both in nearly circular, near-polar orbits. Odyssey is in an orbit slightly higher than that of Global Surveyor in order to preclude the possibility of a collision. However, the two spacecraft occasionally come as close together as 15 kilometers (9 miles).

The images were obtained by the Mars Global Surveyor operations teams at Lockheed Martin Space System, Denver; JPL and Malin Space Science Systems.

The two views of Mars Odyssey in this image were acquired a little under 7.5 seconds apart as Odyssey receded from a close flyby of Mars Global Surveyor. The geometry of the flyby (see Figure 1) and the camera's way of acquiring an image line-by-line resulted in the two views of Odyssey in the same frame. The first view (right) was taken when Odyssey was about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from Global Surveyor and moving more rapidly than Global Surveyor was rotating, as seen from Global Surveyor. A few seconds later, Odyssey was farther away -- about 135 kilometers (84 miles) -- and appeared to be moving more slowly. In this second view of Odyssey (left), the Mars Orbiter Camera's field-of-view overtook Odyssey.

The Mars Orbiter Camera can resolve features on the surface of Mars as small as a few meters or yards across from Mars Global Surveyor's orbital altitude of 350 to 405 kilometers (217 to 252 miles). From a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), the camera would be able to resolve features substantially smaller than 1 meter or yard across.

Mars Odyssey was launched on April 7, 2001, and reached Mars on Oct. 24, 2001. Mars Global Surveyor left Earth on Nov. 7, 1996, and arrived in Mars orbit on Sept. 12, 1997. Both orbiters are in an extended mission phase, both have relayed data from the Mars Exploration Rovers, and both are continuing to return exciting new results from Mars. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages both missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.


Source
 
Mars Global Surveyor pictures fellow satellites


On 21 April 2005, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which has orbited the Red Planet since 1997, caught the Mars Odyssey orbiter on camera from 90 kilometres away.

The image is fuzzy but still shows Odyssey’s major elements, including the long boom that holds a spectrometer away from the craft, the gleaming white high-gain antenna, and the slanted solar array used to generate electricity. Both spacecraft fly in polar orbits, but Odyssey flies higher than Global Surveyor, partly to prevent an accidental collision.

The Global Surveyor also photographed the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, which arrived at Mars in January 2004, making it the newest member of the flotilla. These two spacecraft were about 250 kilometres away during their rendezvous on 20 April. While pictures of Odyssey appear as distinct blobs, Mars Express looks like a narrow zigzag. ESA says this was due to the large distance between the two spacecraft and the different motion of the two probes.

The pictures were captured with Global Surveyor’s Mars Orbiter Camera, operated by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California, US. Normally its lens is turned on Mars, where it can distinguish features as small as several metres across.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7408
 
two more for the skylark (to mars)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4606251.stm

Next US Mars lander gets go-ahead


The US space agency (Nasa) has given the green light to Phoenix, its next mission to land on the surface of Mars.
The announcement allows project team members to proceed with preparations for launch of the spacecraft in 2007.

The lander will touch down in Mars' northern polar region to explore its climate and geology and to look for signs of life, past or present.

Its robotic arm will dig down to the Martian ice layer and deliver samples to the lander's deck for analysis.

The principal scientific investigator on Phoenix, Peter Smith, said the mission "may eventually lead to discoveries relating to life on our neighbouring planet".

From the ashes

If the spacecraft launches as planned in August 2007, it will embark on a relatively long cruise period, arriving at Mars in May 2008.

It is due to carry scientific operations for three months on the Martian surface. Phoenix will be stationary on Mars, in contrast to Nasa's roving robots Spirit and Opportunity.

The mission is so-named because it carries with it the legacies of two earlier, failed, attempts to explore Mars.

The lander was built for the Mars Surveyor mission originally planned for 2001, but mothballed by Nasa's administration in 2000. And many scientific instruments for Phoenix were built or designed for Mars Polar Lander which was lost as it entered the Martian atmosphere in 1999.

The 2001 lander is undergoing modifications to improve the spacecraft's robustness and safety during entry, descent, and landing.

The go-ahead to proceed with launch preparations follows completion of a critical review of the project's planning and preliminary design.

The project is the first of Nasa's relatively low-cost "scout" missions.

(c) bbc 05

----------------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4588139.stm

UK engineers navigate Europe's future


A few more weeks of testing and the box will be closed on one of the most important satellite payloads Europe is ever likely to send into space.

Currently sitting in a cleanroom in Portsmouth in southern England, the container holds the critical technologies on which a new multi-billion euro industry will be built.

If all the payload's components work as designed, a constellation of similar boxes will be ordered up and flown into orbit to complete the Galileo satellite-navigation network - Europe's answer to GPS, the US Global Positioning System.

Except, Galileo will be more than just a copycat. Its next-generation technologies promise a step change in accuracy and reliability for location-based services.

Where GPS signals currently struggle to penetrate our high-rise cities, Galileo will bring performance improvements that should see sat-nav receivers get a fix in even the deepest "urban canyons".

And that should spark an innovation stampede to put sat-nav into many more mobile devices. At least, that is the hope of the European Commission and the European Space Agency which are investing more money into Galileo than any previous space project.

European integration

The Portsmouth payload is currently being prepared by EADS-Astrium.

The company's engineers have taken delivery of pre-built components from all over the continent. Their job has been to integrate these disparate elements into a working whole.

"There is a real level of experimentation attached to this test satellite - to put together all the technologies that were developed over the last few years across Europe and to demonstrate that they actually work," explains Gerrit Beyer, from the Business Development Navigation section of EADS-Astrium.

"Most of the elements come to us as customer-furnished items and it is at the point of integration that problems can arise. When you put elements together you can find they do not talk to each other properly - and we have to fix minor bugs. It's all about interface and performance checks."

First and foremost, there are the atomic clocks that provide the precise timing reference required to work out latitude, longitude and altitude.

As well as two rubidium atomic clocks, the payload will carry a hydrogen maser clock, which has a stability that is better than one nanosecond per day.

Its precision is greater than the rubidium devices and is one of the key design features that gives Galileo its enhanced performance.

Then there is the signal generation unit, a complex processing centre that produces the all-important navigation signal.

This signal goes through an amplification system and is converted to the three frequency bands over which Galileo will work.

Finally, a planar array antenna sits on the side of the box ready to transmit the signal to Earth.

Medium orbit

In the Astrium cleanroom, the payload is attached to a moveable work platform and is surrounded by a bank of computer monitors. Each step of the integration is accompanied by another round of testing.

The clocks' temperature is carefully controlled to ensure there is not more than a one degree deviation from the optimum.

And the cleanroom regime ensures also the payload is protected from electrostatic, magnetic, and particulate damage.

"The preparation time for this spacecraft will be under 30 months from kick-off to launch - which is incredibly fast. What we're doing is more like a completely new scientific satellite and the timescales involved would usually run to many years," says Gordon Robertson, the payload engineering manager.

"The last few weeks have been very intensive. We've achieved so much in such a short period of time that we are wary of something unexpected happening.

"We're well aware that if we get a failure now or some mystery behaviour that we cannot isolate, it could delay us for many, many weeks which is costly and also puts at risk the slated launch schedule."

Soon, the box will be despatched to Rome, where engineers from Alenia Spazio will bolt it to a spacecraft chassis ready for launch from Kazakhstan on a Soyuz rocket.

Known by the uninspiring name GSTB-V2/B, the satellite will sit in a medium-Earth orbit (MEO), at 23,600km (14,600 miles) above the Earth.

This will be a first for Europe - it has previously only flown spacecraft in low or high (geostationary) orbits.

And that brings another complication. Satellites in MEO face particular radiation challenges and one of the major tasks of the test satellite will be to report back on the space environment.

Risk mitigation

A lot may seem to riding on GSTB-V2/B - but the Galileo project is spreading the risk.

Another Galileo Test Bed Satellite (GSTB-V2/A) is being built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) at Guildford, a little under 80km (50 miles) down the road from Portsmouth.

Although not as big as the spacecraft being produced by Astrium and its partners in the Galileo Industries consortium, the Surrey test bed will nonetheless get to run the rule over a number of the key technologies.

It may even be the first to ride the Soyuz that has been booked for December. If that does happen, the Surrey satellite will perform the essential task of filing the first frequencies.

The International Telecommunication Union, which oversees the radio spectrum, has told Europe it must start using the space allocated for Galileo by mid-2006 or risk losing it.

"It's crucial we make sure there's a European satellite up there transmitting navigation signals because that will then secure our ownership of the frequencies," explained Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, SSTL's chief executive.

His company was chosen to produce a parallel satellite because of the expertise it has developed in putting together smallish spacecraft in tight timeframes.

The European Space Agency will not say publicly which of the two test beds will fly first, but either way it reflects well on the state of the British space industry that it should be asked to prepare both payloads.

"Galileo is an incredibly important system for Europe and the UK is playing a very large role," said Professor Sweeting. "It's always good if you've got some competition on these big projects, and having some friendly rivalry sharpens your approach.

"It's good for us and Astrium - and it's also extremely good for the European tax-payer because it does mean you are more likely to get an efficient and cost-effective approach."

Gordon Robertson added: "When you step back from the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day work, you are aware that this is one of Europe's greatest space projects. And it's also about having to work so closely with companies all over Europe.

"What we're doing may be a large chunk of it but it's very much dependent on what people are doing in Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere.

"We're teleconferencing every day, we're flying to meetings, sending e-mails - and pulling all that together is a challenge in itself."

(c) bbc 05
 
broom broom


Martian rover rolls free of trap


The US space agency's (Nasa) Mars rover Opportunity has finally broken free of the sand trap that has prevented it from rolling over the Red Planet.
The robot vehicle started to experience wheel slippage while trying to traverse a ripple-shaped dune on 26 April.

Engineers used a model rover back on Earth to work out a driving strategy to release Opportunity from the deep dirt.

And at the weekend the rover confirmed it was rolling free again with an image of a clean set of tracks to the rear.

Nasa said it would study Opportunity's surroundings carefully before commanding the vehicle to take a long drive.

Engineers want to be sure there are not any other sand traps close by that could catch the vehicle for second time.

Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, have been studying the geology on opposite sides of the planet for more than a year since successfully completing their three-month primary missions.

The robots have worked superbly under harsh Martian conditions far longer than expected.

Shortly after landing in January 2004, Opportunity found layered bedrock bearing geological evidence of a shallow ancient sea.

More than one year later, Spirit found extensive layered bedrock after driving for about three km and climbing into the "Columbia Hills."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4612649.stm
 
told you so.... :roll:


[/quote]

Mars probe 'was doomed' say MPs


The ill-fated Beagle 2 Mars probe should never have been given the go-ahead, a powerful MPs' committee has said.
The much-hyped probe was "doomed from the start", the public accounts committee said while criticising the management of civil space activities.

The projects, in partnerships with the government, were "expensive, uncertain, and over-ambitious", it said.

The UK government spent £188m on civil space activities in 2003/04.

The Beagle 2 mission cost an estimated £50m.

The much-trumpeted Beagle 2 probe was supposed to have landed on Mars to look for signs of life on the Red Planet, but nothing was heard from the probe after it was ejected from its mothership, the Mars Express orbiter.

The failure of the mission was a huge blow to Britain's space community and the European Space Agency (Esa).

In a report on Thursday, the committee said poor risk management left the project with "no real prospect of success".

"The project suffered from an over-ambitious time schedule, punishing weight constraints, poor management and uncertain funding," it said.

'Allowance for risk'

Speaking on BBC Radio Five Live Breakfast, Edward Leigh, who chaired the committee when it carried out the inquiry, said: "You probably think we're just boring bean counters but it is public money and we are spending a lot of money on this and frankly the Beagle 2 project failed because, as we said, there was an over-ambitious time-table, there were last-minute technical changes, there was uncertain funding, [and] there was poor risk management.

"Of course it's an ambitious project, of course it's a good project but it's got to be run properly on behalf of the taxpayer."

The government's space activities are carried out by a partnership of 10 government departments, agencies and research councils.

"The British National Space Centre and the Department [of Trade and Industry] should only proceed with such ambitious projects if sufficient resources can be committed from the outset to give a reasonable prospect of success, making due allowance for risk, the committee said.

But Open University planetary scientist Professor Colin Pillinger, who first proposed the Beagle 2 project, told BBC News it was "not a waste of money".

Earlier he defended the right to take risks.

"You do not inspire anybody if it is a forgone conclusion and we are in the business of doing research, he told Five Live:

"The research involved was to answer a question that has puzzled people for thousands of years."

In its report on the activities, the Public Accounts Committee acknowledged space projects were expensive and uncertain, saying some, such as Beagle 2, had failed and others had been delayed.

But it said the partnership had to improve its risk management, and the agencies involved should put in sufficient funding at the outset of a project to identify and mitigate technical and construction risks.

They should also address the risks posed by collaborating with other bodies such as Esa and the US space agency (Nasa), and they should deal with risks explicitly in appraising project funding.

The committee also called on the partnership to look again at the costs of the Galileo project - the European satellite-navigation system.

The partnership has estimated the UK would benefit by £6bn from the project, with an outlay of £78m.

But the committee backed the findings of a previous report which queried the cost and benefits analysis.

It also questioned the procurement system used by Esa. The cost of space programmes are increased by the system which means contracts are not always awarded to the most cost-effective bidder, the committee said.


 
Another one ready to go...

New Mars probe 'ready for launch'


Nasa is to launch a new Mars probe after the rocket designed to send it into orbit was not found to be faulty.
The $500m (£280m) Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will lift off from Florida on Thursday, after a delay of one day over safety concerns.

It will arrive in orbit around Mars in March to look at the history of water on the planet and hunt for landing sites for future manned missions.

MRO can transmit 10 times more data each minute than previous Mars probes.

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station no earlier than 0850 local time (1250 GMT), Nasa has said.

Lift-off has been programmed for between 0735 and 0950 local time (1135 and 1350 GMT). A severe thunderstorm drenched the cape early on Thursday, causing a one-and-a-half-hour delay in launch preparations.

The launch marks the first use by Nasa of the powerful Atlas V rocket, which is manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

Problems with equipment on a rocket similar to the Atlas V rocket designed to launch the probe were not found to have affected the actual launch vehicle, a Nasa spokesman said.

Water search

MRO is the biggest spacecraft to be sent to Mars, carrying some of the most sophisticated instruments ever.

"MRO is the next step in our ambitious exploration of Mars," said Douglas McCuistion, director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme.

"We expect to use this spacecraft's eyes in the sky in coming years as our primary tools to identify and evaluate the best places for future missions to land."

The spacecraft will study the composition and structure of Mars and serve as a powerful communications relay for future missions to the surface.

One of its scientific objectives is to explore whether Mars could once have supported microbial life.

Its cameras and spectrometers will search the surface for features related to water, without which life is not thought able to survive.

Meanwhile, a radar sounder will look for liquid water reservoirs that may exist beneath the surface of Mars.

Beagle clues

British scientists hope it will also discover what happened to the lost Mars probe, Beagle 2.

Professor Colin Pillinger, from the Open University, who led the Beagle 2 mission, said: "If we could just see some trace of it on the surface then at least we could see how far it got - the not knowing is the worst bit.

"It will be a very difficult thing to do, but this is our best chance of finding out what happened and we will be watching the progress of the mission with great interest and anticipation."

MRO will join two US orbiters - the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey - and one European orbiter, Mars Express, at the Red Planet.

Two US robotic rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been on the Martian surface for the past 18 months, investigating the geology of Mars.

Nasa is planning two further Mars missions this decade: the Phoenix module, set for launch in 2007, and Mars Science Laboratory in 2009.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4134300.stm
 
Europe aims lone rover for Mars

Europe has fixed on a concept for its next mission to land on the Red Planet.

It aims to send a single robot rover to the Martian surface along with another, stationary, science package.

The European Space Agency (Esa) had also been considering a mission concept from the British team behind Beagle 2, but this is no longer on the table.

However, the Beagle team could yet see their science instruments, or ones derived from them, carried on the 580-million-euro mobile laboratory.

A three-day meeting next week at the space agency's European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, will discuss what experiments the craft should take to Mars, and the UK team has submitted its own ideas and proposals.

Two-pronged mission

Their BeagleNet concept for the mission - which envisaged dropping two small rovers on the planet - has fallen out of the running and Esa has opted instead for the single rover concept loosely referred to as ExoMars.

The Mars lander is part of Esa's Aurora programme, a long-term plan for robotic and - potentially - human exploration of the Solar System, with Mars, the Moon and the asteroids as likely targets.

"It is a two-pronged mission: there will be a rover and a fixed station, which will do geophysics, meteorology and environment studies," explained Dr Mark Sims, of Leicester University, who is chairman of the UK's Aurora Advisory Committee.

"The fixed station and/or the rover may contain elements of a Beagle 2-type payload. Whether it does or not is very much dependent on the discussions next week."

A primary objective of the mission is to search for signs of past or present life; it will leave Earth in June 2011 and arrive at Mars in June 2013.

Vital tools

Esa is currently aiming at a mass of 120kg for the rover and 8-14kg for the science payload, said Dr Sims.

"Must haves" for the rover payload include a drill or "mole" for burrowing beneath the Martian soil and an experiment for detecting past or present life, in addition to the other instruments.

The fixed station will feature a seismometer to measure Marsquakes and a meteorology package as its must-haves. Other instruments on the stationary element could include sensors to collect data on UV light, radiation or magnetic fields.

The European agency is looking at using US spacecraft in orbit around Mars to relay data from the lander to Earth. In return, US instruments could be placed on the mission's science payload.

It had also planned to seek American hardware for the lander's entry, descent and landing systems. But this has fallen foul of US budget limitations and a legal regime there known as Itar (International Traffic in Arms Regulations).

The Itar export regulations are designed to protect sensitive military technology falling into the wrong hands. But they also apply to satellite technology, including entry, descent and landing systems.

Collaboration talks

Despite Esa's decision to go with the ExoMars concept, there may yet be hope for BeagleNet. Professor Colin Pillinger, lead scientist on the Beagle 2 mission, is still convinced of the merits of a small twin rover mission.

He and colleagues have started informal discussions with other space agencies about the possibility of a joint collaboration based on just such a concept.

Dr Sims said there could be openings in Nasa's robotic exploration programme for such a project, in particular a low-cost "scout" mission opportunity scheduled for launch in 2011. However, this would be in open competition with US teams.

The outcome of discussions next week on the science package for Europe's Martian rover mission will go to the Aurora programme board and other Esa bodies for approval.

The agency's member states will then have to sign off the mission. Ministers will have their say when the Esa Council meets on 5 and 6 December.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4180840.stm
 
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