Russia and Europe to Send Man to Mars?

Analysis by Ian O'Neill

From http://news.discovery.com/

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Doug Ellison

It's usually the assumption that the first man or woman to first set foot on Martian dirt will be American. After all, the only men to walk on the lunar surface were employed by NASA.

This assumption could be turned on its head if a recent announcement by the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) follows through.

Speaking to reporters at an air show near Moscow on Wednesday, Jean-Jacques Dordain said ESA and Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) would "carry out the first flight to Mars together," according to RIA Novosti.

WATCH VIDEO: New concepts for Mars-probing rovers would use Martian wind to move around the planet.

Naturally, there's no promise of a target date, but Dordain's announcement underscores an important fact: to get humanity to Mars, international collaboration will be desirable. Perhaps even essential.

Interestingly, one of the key deciding factors for the joint ESA/Roscosmos proposition appears to be the Russian Mars500 project. Mars500 is a 520-day simulated "mission" to the Red Planet being run by Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems. ESA is also involved in the project.

SEE ALSO: 'Mars Mission' Crew to Spend 520 Days in Isolation

In November, the crew of Mars500 are set to be released from confinement when they "return to Earth." The crew of six men (controversially, no women were selected to participate) are currently enduring the confines of a 550-cubic-meter (19,400-cubic-foot) mock spaceship, studying the physiological and psychological impact of an 18 month return trip to Mars.

As I discussed in a recent Discovery News article (read "To Make Mankind Great Again, Push to Mars"), a huge amount of energy is being directed into planning for mankind's "next great step," but politics and money all-too-often gets in the way of any real progress being made.

Perhaps ESA and Roscosmos can sidestep the worst financial issues by combining resources and setting their international sights on Mars. After all, landing a human on an alien world should be an international effort, but whether or not this happens remains to be seen.

Eight years and 34 million miles on, Mars rover nears end of road

By Adam Sherwin

From http://www.independent.co.uk/

REUTERS

An artist's impression of one of the two Mars rovers, which have been studying geological samples on the planet

• enlarge

It travelled at an average speed of 60cm an hour and it has arrived a year late. But the Mars rover Opportunity is finally approaching its destination, the rim of the vast Endeavour crater.

Nasa hailed the six-wheel Opportunity's approach to the 22.5km-wide crater last night as a "tremendous scientific success".

The ageing robotic field geologist has logged more than 32km since it was first parachuted on to the planet's surface in 2003, along with its twin rover Spirit, for a planned three-month mission after their 34 million-mile journey from Earth. Spirit emitted its last signal a year ago after becoming trapped in sand. Opportunity crawled out from a crater in 2008 and headed south to the Endeavour, a two-year journey in theory, which has taken longer because Opportunity had to drive backwards to prevent its front wheel from wearing out.

At the crater, Opportunity will travel south across the rim to perform a geological assessment of the location, examining the clay minerals formed under wet conditions at the oldest of the four craters it has visited.

The finishing point was nicknamed Spirit Point in honour of Opportunity's fallen twin. Scott Maxwell, leader of the Mars Rover driving team, tweeted: "The drive we uplink today will actually take us physically on to Cape York. So. *Freaking*. Excited."

Project manager John Callas, of the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that reaching the Endeavour crater was an important science target: "We will likely spend years at this location. It's not just one spot. There's kilometres of interesting geology to explore."

Endeavour is more than 25 times wider than the Victoria crater, an earlier stop that the rover examined for two years. Nasa believes Endeavour is much older. The minerals and sediments had previously only been viewed at a distance by orbiting spacecraft.

Mr Callas said: "It represents geology from very early in Mars history. It's understanding what happened to Mars a long time ago."

Both rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars. Scientists now know that Mars was at one time like Earth, with an atmosphere thick enough to support liquid water which may have been favourable for microbial life.

Mr Callas said the Spirit rover also found evidence of ancient hydrothermal systems on Mars that could support an ecosystem. He said the Opportunity was still in good health despite some "arthritis" in its joints, adding: "We're on the surface of a planet that's hundreds of millions of kilometres away in frigid cold temperatures."

Meet NASA’s next Mars rover: Curiosity. It has a plutonium-powered laser

By Sebastian Anthony
From http://www.extremetech.com/

After a series of moderately successful Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), NASA is about to take its game to the next level. Say hello to Curiosity, which is 10 feet (3m) long and weighs almost a ton, four times more than Spirit and Opportunity. It is expected to launch in November or December, and arrive on Mars about eight months later.

Not only is Curiosity huge, but it’s also equipped with a robot arm, a laser that can vaporize rocks at seven meters, and a percussive drill for boring into Mars’ surface. The machine itself is powered by the heat given off by 4.8kg plutonium dioxide, meaning it won’t rely on solar power, which has caused issues with older space craft. It’s not just the rover itself that’s cool cool, though: because it’s so heavy, Curiosity can’t use the highly scientific approach of “airbagging” to soften its landing — instead, it will descend through the Mars atmosphere using a retrorocket jet pack.

It is not yet known where Curiosity will land on Mars — the final choice will likely be made in the next few days — but there are two front-runners: Gale Crater, a 150-kilometer depression with a 5-kilometer-high mound of ancient sediment that might contain telltale signs of organic life, and Eberswalde Crater, which is thought to contain a river delta and lakebed deposits. Both landing sites are theorized to have once contained water, and Curiosity will be tasked with analyzing whether one of these regions — and Mars itself — was once habitable. The total cost of the Curiosity mission, incidentally, will be at least $2.3 billion — well beyond the $820 million spent on Spirit and Opportunity.

At this point, we strongly suggest that you look at the full-size images of Curiosity, both on NASA’s website and Wired.

If you want to read more about the mission itself, check out the Mars Science Laboratory website or Nature’s write-up.

New animation depicts next Mars rover in action

This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Curiosity is being tested in preparation for launch in the fall of 2011. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

(PhysOrg.com) -- Although NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will not leave Earth until late this year nor land on Mars until August 2012, anyone can watch those dramatic events now in a new animation of the mission.

The full, 11-minute animation, shows sequences such as the spacecraft separating from its launch vehicle near Earth and the mission's rover, Curiosity, zapping rocks with a laser and examining samples of powdered rock on Mars. A shorter, narrated version is also available below.

Curiosity's landing will use a different method than any previous Mars landing, with the rover suspended on tethers from a rocket-backpack "sky crane."

The new animation combines detailed views of the spacecraft with scenes of real places on Mars, based on stereo images taken by earlier missions.

"It is a treat for the 2,000 or more people who have worked on the Mars Science Laboratory during the past eight years to watch these action scenes of the hardware the project has developed and assembled," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Pete Theisinger at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The animation also provides an exciting view of this mission for any fan of adventure and exploration."

Provided by JPL/NASA (news : web)

Next Mars Rover Will "See" in 3-D Color

from: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/



Two digital color cameras on the mast of NASA's next Mars rover will complement each other in showing the surface of Mars in exquisite detail.  They are the left and right eyes of the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, instrument on the Curiosity rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, launching in late 2011.

The right-eye Mastcam looks through a telephoto lens, revealing details near or far with about three-fold better resolution than any previous landscape-viewing camera on the surface of Mars. The left-eye Mastcam provides broader context through a medium-angle lens. Each can acquire thousands of full-color images and store them in an eight-gigabyte flash memory. Both cameras are also capable of recording high-definition video at about eight frames per second. Combining information from the two eyes can yield 3-D views of the telephoto part of the scene.

The motivation to put telephoto capability in Curiosity's main science imaging instrument grew from experience with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and its studies of an arena-size crater in 2004. The science camera on that rover's mast, which can see details comparably to what a human eye can see at the same distance, showed intriguing patterns in the layers of Burns Cliff inside Endurance Crater.

"We tried to get over and study it, but the rover could not negotiate the steep slope," recalled Mastcam Principal Investigator Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "We all desperately coveted a telephoto lens." NASA selected his Mastcam proposal later that year for the Mars Science Laboratory rover.

The telephoto Mastcam, called "Mastcam 100" for its 100-millimeter focal-length lens, provides enough resolution to distinguish a basketball from a football at a distance of seven football fields, or to read "ONE CENT" on a penny on the ground beside the rover. Its images cover an area about six degrees wide by five degrees tall.

Its left-eye partner, called "Mastcam 34" for its 34-millimeter lens, catches a scene three times wider -- about 18 degrees wide and 15 degrees tall -- with each exposure.

Researchers will use the Mastcams and nine other science instruments on Curiosity to study past and present environments in a carefully chosen area of Mars. They will assess whether conditions have been favorable for life and favorable for preserving evidence about whether life has existed there. Mastcam imaging of the shapes and colors of landscapes, rocks and soils will provide clues about the history of environmental processes that have formed them and modified them over time. Images and videos of the sky will document contemporary processes, such as movement of clouds and dust.

Previous color cameras on Mars have taken a sequence of exposures through different color filters to be combined on Earth into color views. The Mastcams record color the same way consumer digital cameras do: They have a grid of tiny red, green and blue squares (a "Bayer pattern" filter) fitted over the electronic light detector (the charge-coupled device, or CCD). This allows the Mastcams to get the three color components over the entire scene in a single exposure.

Mastcam's color-calibration target on the rover deck includes magnets to keep the highly magnetic Martian dust from accumulating on portions of color chips and white-gray-balance reference chips. Natural lighting on Mars tends to be redder than on Earth due to dust in Mars' atmosphere. "True color" images can be produced that incorporate that lighting effect -- comparable to the greenish look of color-film images taken under fluorescent lights on Earth without a white-balancing adjustment. A white-balance calculation can yield a more natural look by adjusting for the tint of the lighting, as the human eye tends to do and digital cameras can do. The Mastcams are capable of producing both true-color and white-balanced images.

Besides the affixed red-green-blue filter grid, the Mastcams have wheels of other filters that can be rotated into place between the lens and the CCD. These include science spectral filters for examining the ground or sky in narrow bands of visible-light or near-infrared wavelengths. One filter on each camera allows it to look directly at the sun to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, a key part of Mars' weather.

"Something we're likely to do frequently is to look at rocks and features with the Mastcam 34 red-green-blue filter, and if we see something of interest, follow that up with the Mastcam 34 and Mastcam 100 science spectral filters," Malin said. "We can use the red-green-blue data for quick reconnaissance and the science filters for target selection."

When Curiosity drives to a new location, Mastcam 34 can record a full-color, full-circle panorama about 60 degrees tall by taking 150 images in about 25 minutes. Using Mastcam 100, the team will be able to broaden the swath of terrain evaluated on either side of the path Curiosity drives, compared to what has been possible with earlier Mars rovers. That will help with selection of the most interesting targets to approach for analysis by Curiosity's other instruments and will provide additional geological context for interpreting data about the chosen targets.

The Mastcams will provide still images and video to study motions of the rover -- both for science, such as seeing how soils interact with wheels, and for engineering, such as aiding in use of the robotic arm. In other videos, the team may use cinematic techniques such as panning across a scene and using the rover's movement for "dolly" shots.

Each of the two-megapixel Mastcams can take and store thousands of images, though the amount received on Earth each day will depend on how the science team chooses priorities for the day's available data-transmission volume. Malin anticipates frequent use of Mastcam "thumbnail" frames -- compressed roughly 150-by-150-pixel versions of each image -- as an index of the full-scale images held in the onboard memory.

Malin Space Science Systems built the Mastcam instrument and will operate it. The company's founder, Michael Malin, participated in NASA's Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s, provided the Mars Orbiter Camera for NASA's Mars Global Surveyor mission, and is the principal investigator for both the Context Camera and the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The science team for Mastcam and two other instruments the same company provided for Curiosity includes the lead scientist for the mast-mounted science cameras on Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity (James Bell of Arizona State University); the lead scientist for the mast camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander (Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University); James Cameron, director of such popular movies as "Titanic" and "Avatar"; and 17 others with expertise in geology, soils, frost, atmosphere, imaging and other topics.

The Daily Galaxy via  http://www.nasa.gov/msl. You can follow the mission on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MarsCuriosity and on Twitter @marscuriosity . A full listing of JPL social media accounts is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/social .
This color image at the top of the page is a three dimensional (3D) view of a digital elevation map of a sample collected by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).

The image shows four round pits, only 5 microns in depth, that were micromachined into the silicon substrate, which is the background plane shown in red. This image has been processed to reflect the levelness of the substrate. A Martian particle -- only one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across -- is held in the upper left pit.

The rounded particle -- shown at the highest magnification ever seen from another world -- is a particle of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil.

The particle was part of a sample informally called "Sorceress" delivered to the AFM on the 38th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (July 2, 2008). The AFM is part of Phoenix's microscopic station called MECA, or the Miscroscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer.

The AFM was developed by a Swiss-led consortium, with Imperial College London producing the silicon substrate that holds sampled particles.

 Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Posted at 12:10 AM | Permalink

NASA and Microsoft Let You Explore Mars Like Never Before

By: Stan Schroeder
From: http://mashable.com/

Microsoft Research and NASA have teamed up once again and brought the “most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available” to WorldWide Telescope. Microsoft’s app lets you explore space either through a zoom-and-pan interface or guided tours.

This imagery is the handiwork of a group informally called the Mapmakers, led by NASA’s Michael Broxton. Their job is to take satellite images from Mars and elsewhere in our solar system, and turn them into maps.

Yes, it sounds like every geek’s dream job, and having a name that sounds like something from a William Gibson novel doesn’t hurt, either. Director of Microsoft Research’s Earth Dan Fay has worked with Broxton to turn these images and maps into an immersive new experience for the Worldwide Telescope.

“NASA had the images and they were open to new ways to share them. Through the WorldWide Telescope we were able to build a user interface at WWT|Mars that would allow people to take advantage of the great content they had,” Fay says.

As far as what kind of imagery you can expect here, one example is a new dataset from the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which is a remote-sensing camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are taken in an incredibly high resolution — each image is a gigapixel in size — and the team took all 13,000 HiRISE images and stitched them onto one map. This map, says NASA, is the “highest-resolution map of Mars’s surface ever constructed.”

WorldWide Telescope is available as a desktop application or a web client (which requires Microsoft Silverlight) over at www.worldwidetelescope.org.

Rover spots ‘strange stuff’ on Martian rock: Scientists puzzle over images showing tightly packed blueberries

MSNBC.com

Space.com

An enhanced-color image of the Chocolate Hills rock on Mars shows a strange coating that one researcher has called a "blueberry sandwich." The coating appears blue in this picture due to the false-color effect, but the naked eye would see this scene in shades of rusty red. Chocolate Hills is about the size of a loaf of bread. Click on the picture for a larger version.

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has found a Martian rock covered in weird material as its odometer hit a major milestone this week, with the long-lived robot completing equivalent to a half–marathon on the Red Planet.

Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, found the odd Mars rock during the past six weeks studying investigating a crater called "Concepción."

The crater is about 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter, with dark rays extending from it, as seen from orbit, which made it a target of interest for rover inspection because they suggest the crater is young.

The rover made the pit stop to investigate the crater on its long journey to the large crater Endeavour, which is still about 7 miles (12 kilometers) away. It was while Opportunity was at Concepción that the rover surpassed 12.43 miles (20 kilometers) of total driving, about the length of a half-marathon.

Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled robot to land on Mars. Its robotic twin Spirit, which landed in January 2004 just weeks ahead of Opportunity, has driven about 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers), while NASA's Sojourner rover, a small robot that landed in 1997, could drive only about a third of a mile (about half a kilometer) from the Pathfinder base it landed with.

Mars rock oddity
With new software that allows Opportunity to photograph rocks and other aspects of the Martian terrain and decide for itself what is worth closer inspection, the rover took an up-close look at a few rocks ejected by the impact that created Concepción.

What Opportunity has seen are chunks of the same type of bedrock it has seen at hundreds of locations since landing in January 2004: soft, sulfate-rich sandstone holding harder peppercorn-size dark spheres like berries in a muffin. The little spheres, rich in iron, gained the nickname "blueberries." But these rocks have some unusual twists as well.

"It was clear from the images that Opportunity took on the approach to Concepción that there was strange stuff on lots of the rocks near the crater," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity and Spirit. "There's dark, grayish material coating faces of the rocks and filling fractures in them. At least part of it is composed of blueberries jammed together as close as you could pack them. We've never seen anything like this before."

Opportunity used tools on its robotic arm to examine this unusual material on a rock called "Chocolate Hills." In some places, the layer of closely packed spheres lies between thinner, smoother layers.

"It looks like a blueberry sandwich," said Matt Golombek, a rover science-team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell A false-color image from the Opportunity rover's microscopic imager shows details of the "blueberry" coating on Chocolate Hills. The view covers an area about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Melted Mars rocks
Initial analysis of the coating's composition does not show any obvious component from whatever space rock hit Mars to dig the crater, but that is not a surprise, Golombek said. "The impact is so fast, most of the impactor vaporizes," he said. "Thin films of melt get thrown out, but typically the composition of the melt is the stuff that the impactor hit, rather than the impactor material."

The composition Opportunity found for the dark coating material fits at least two hypotheses being evaluated, and possibly others. One is that the material resulted from partial melting of blueberry-containing sandstone due to the energy of the impact. Another is that it formed from the filling of fractures in this type of rock before the impact occurred.

"It's possible that when you melt this rock, the sandstone melts before the blueberries do, leaving intact blueberries as part of a melt layer," Squyres said.

"As an alternative, we know that this type of rock has fractures and that the sandstone can dissolve," he said. "Long ago, water flowing through fractures could have dissolved the sandstone and liberated blueberries that fell down into the fracture and packed together. In this hypothesis, the impact that excavated the crater did not play a role in forming this material, but split rocks along fractures so the material is exposed on the exterior like a coating."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UA An orbital image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Opportunity rover (indicated by the white pointer) perched on the edge of Concepcion crater on Mars.

Golombek said, "One consideration that jumps out is that we've been driving around this part of Mars for six years and never seen this stuff before, then we get to this young crater and it's coating rocks all around the crater. Sure looks like there's a connection, but it could just be a coincidence."

The observation that the rocks thrown from the crater have not yet eroded away much is evidence that the crater is young, confirming the suggestion from the dark rays.

"We're not ready to attach a number to it, but this is really young. It is the youngest crater we've ever seen with Opportunity and probably the youngest either rover has seen," Squyres said.

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" name="ci" type="hidden">Rover spots ‘strange stuff’ on Martian rock Scientists puzzle over images showing tightly packed blueberriesSpace.com
updated 1:45 p.m. ET,Thurs., March. 25, 2010NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has found a Martian rock covered in weird material as its odometer hit a major milestone this week, with the long-lived robot completing equivalent to a half–marathon on the Red Planet.Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, found the odd Mars rock during the past six weeks studying investigating a crater called "Concepción."The crater is about 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter, with dark rays extending from it, as seen from orbit, which made it a target of interest for rover inspection because they suggest the crater is young.The rover made the pit stop to investigate the crater on its long journey to the large crater Endeavour, which is still about 7 miles (12 kilometers) away. It was while Opportunity was at Concepción that the rover surpassed 12.43 miles (20 kilometers) of total driving, about the length of a half-marathon. Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled robot to land on Mars. Its robotic twin Spirit, which landed in January 2004 just weeks ahead of Opportunity, has driven about 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers), while NASA's Sojourner rover, a small robot that landed in 1997, could drive only about a third of a mile (about half a kilometer) from the Pathfinder base it landed with.Mars rock oddity
With new software that allows Opportunity to photograph rocks and other aspects of the Martian terrain and decide for itself what is worth closer inspection, the rover took an up-close look at a few rocks ejected by the impact that created Concepción.What Opportunity has seen are chunks of the same type of bedrock it has seen at hundreds of locations since landing in January 2004: soft, sulfate-rich sandstone holding harder peppercorn-size dark spheres like berries in a muffin. The little spheres, rich in iron, gained the nickname "blueberries." But these rocks have some unusual twists as well."It was clear from the images that Opportunity took on the approach to Concepción that there was strange stuff on lots of the rocks near the crater," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity and Spirit. "There's dark, grayish material coating faces of the rocks and filling fractures in them. At least part of it is composed of blueberries jammed together as close as you could pack them. We've never seen anything like this before."Opportunity used tools on its robotic arm to examine this unusual material on a rock called "Chocolate Hills." In some places, the layer of closely packed spheres lies between thinner, smoother layers."It looks like a blueberry sandwich," said Matt Golombek, a rover science-team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.Melted Mars rocks
Initial analysis of the coating's composition does not show any obvious component from whatever space rock hit Mars to dig the crater, but that is not a surprise, Golombek said. "The impact is so fast, most of the impactor vaporizes," he said. "Thin films of melt get thrown out, but typically the composition of the melt is the stuff that the impactor hit, rather than the impactor material."The composition Opportunity found for the dark coating material fits at least two hypotheses being evaluated, and possibly others. One is that the material resulted from partial melting of blueberry-containing sandstone due to the energy of the impact. Another is that it formed from the filling of fractures in this type of rock before the impact occurred."It's possible that when you melt this rock, the sandstone melts before the blueberries do, leaving intact blueberries as part of a melt layer," Squyres said."As an alternative, we know that this type of rock has fractures and that the sandstone can dissolve," he said. "Long ago, water flowing through fractures could have dissolved the sandstone and liberated blueberries that fell down into the fracture and packed together. In this hypothesis, the impact that excavated the crater did not play a role in forming this material, but split rocks along fractures so the material is exposed on the exterior like a coating."Golombek said, "One consideration that jumps out is that we've been driving around this part of Mars for six years and never seen this stuff before, then we get to this young crater and it's coating rocks all around the crater. Sure looks like there's a connection, but it could just be a coincidence."The observation that the rocks thrown from the crater have not yet eroded away much is evidence that the crater is young, confirming the suggestion from the dark rays."We're not ready to attach a number to it, but this is really young. It is the youngest crater we've ever seen with Opportunity and probably the youngest either rover has seen," Squyres said.© 2010 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36037050/MSN Privacy .
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Volunteers wanted for simulated 520-day Mars mission

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The simulations will take place here on Earth inside a special facility in Moscow. A precursor 105-day study is scheduled to early 2009, possibly followed by another 105-day study, before the full 520-day study begins late 2009. Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

(PhysOrg.com) -- Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

The ‘mission’ is part of the Mars500 programme being conducted by ESA and Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research. ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight is undertaking Mars500 as part of its European Programme for Life and Physical Sciences (ELIPS) to prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars.

Enlarge

The Mars500 study takes place in a special isolation facility at the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. The purpose of the Mars500 study is to gather data, knowledge and experience to help prepare for a real mission to Mars one day. The participants are subjects in scientific investigations to assess the effect that isolation has on various psychological and physiological aspects, such as stress, hormone regulation and immunity, sleep quality, mood and the effectiveness of dietary supplements. Credits: ESA

Following on from the successful 105-day precursor study completed in July, ESA is now looking for two candidates and two backups for the full 520-day study, which is due to get underway before mid-2010 after four months of training.

The crew will follow a programme designed to simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240 days travelling back to Earth. For the ‘surface exploration’, half of the crew will move to the facility’s martian simulation module and the hatch to the rest of the facility will be closed.

Candidates should be aged 20-50, motivated, in good health and no taller than 185 cm. They should speak one of the working languages: English and Russian. Candidates must have a background and work experience in medicine, biology, life support systems engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering or mechanical engineering.

Enlarge

Cyrille Fournier helps Oliver Knickel prepare for a nighttime EEG. Credits: ESA

Selection will be based on education, professional experience, medical fitness and social habits. Following an initial assessment, potential candidates will have to submit results from medical tests and will then be invited for interview, to be screened in a process similar to that used in astronaut selection.

The candidates’ nationality and residence is restricted to ESA Member States participating in ELIPS (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada).

More information: The Call for Candidates and related documents are available on: http://www.esa.int/callmars500

Provided by European Space Agency (news : web)

Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

October 6th, 2009 by Lisa Zyga

In the VASIMR rocket, magnetic fields force the charged plasma out the back of the engine, producing thrust in the opposite direction. Image copyright: Ad Astra Rocket Company.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. The test also marks the first time that a small-scale prototype of the company's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) rocket engine has been demonstrated at full power

"It's the most powerful plasma rocket in the world right now," says Franklin Chang-Diaz, former NASA astronaut and CEO of Ad Astra. The company has signed an agreement with NASA to test a 200-kilowatt VASIMR engine on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013. The engine could provide periodic boosts to the ISS, which gradually drops in altitude due to atmospheric drag. ISS boosts are currently provided by spacecraft with conventional thrusters, which consume about 7.5 tonnes of propellant per year. By cutting this amount down to 0.3 tonnes, Chang-Diaz estimates that VASIMR could save NASA millions of dollars per year.

But Ad Astra has bigger plans for VASIMR, such as high-speed missions to Mars. A 10- to 20-megawatt VASIMR engine could propel human missions to Mars in just 39 days, whereas conventional rockets would take six months or more. The shorter the trip, the less time astronauts would be exposed to space radiation, which is a significant hurdle for Mars missions. VASIMR could also be adapted to handle the high payloads of robotic missions, though at slower speeds than lighter human missions.

Chang-Diaz has been working on the development of the VASIMR concept since 1979, before founding Ad Astra in 2005 to further develop the project. The technology uses radio waves to heat gases such as hydrogen, argon, and neon, creating hot plasma. Magnetic fields force the charged plasma out the back of the engine, producing thrust in the opposite direction. Due to the high velocity that this method achieves, less fuel is required than in conventional engines. In addition, VASIMR has no physical electrodes in contact with the plasma, prolonging the engine's lifetime and enabling a higher power density than in other designs.

More information: www.AdAstraRocket.com

Nasa proposes Mars trip as Moon mission deemed too expensive to fly

By Daily Mail Reporter

A White House panel of independent space experts says Nasa's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly due to a lack of funds.

The expert panel estimates it would cost about $3 billion a year beyond Nasa's current $18 billion annual budget.

'Under the budget that was proposed, exploration beyond Earth is not viable,' panel member Edward Crawley, from MIT said.

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The expert panel said private companies should be encouraged to invest in the International Space Station. Astronauts like Danny Olivas, pictured, are due to leave the station for good in 2015

The report gives options to President Barack Obama, but said Nasa's current plans have to change. Five years ago, then-President George W. Bush proposed returning astronauts to the moon by 2020.

To pay for it, he planned on retiring the shuttle next year and shutting down the international space station in 2015.

All those deadlines have to change, the panel said. Space exploration would work better by including other countries and private for-profit firms.

'The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources,' the report concluded.

The panel had previously estimated that the current plan would cost $100 billion in spending to 2020.

Former Nasa associate administrator Alan Stern said the report showed the harsh facts that Nasa's space plans had 'a mismatch between resources and rhetoric.'

Now, he said, Obama faces a choice of 'essentially abandoning human spaceflight' or paying the extra money.

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A gibbous moon hangs above Earth's atmosphere, photographed from the Space Shuttle Discovery. Nasa will not be able to return there unless $3billion is added to their annual budget

Nasa has already spent $7.7billion of a planned $40billion budget to develop a new rocket and capsule to transport astronauts to the space station and the Moon, said Jeff Hanley, manager of the post-shuttle program known as Constellation.

In response to the panel, Nasa has proposed heading to Mars instead of returning to the Moon. It would mean a major shift for the U.S human space programme.

It also follows critical comments by second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin about a return mission to our natural satellite.

'There's no reason for us to go back,' he said.

'We can look at the effects of long-term missions in space by flying around comets, rather than setting up a base on the Moon. We're not going to launch any missions from there.'

Mars next? Nasa has proposed ignoring the Moon and heading for the Red Planet

Nasa drafted its concept proposal called 'Generation Mars', which envisions a 30-year blueprint for developing technologies, staging initial missions to asteroids, and building grassroots support for eventual human expeditions to Mars.

Professor Crawley said: 'It'll be for the next budget cycles after that to figure out when we might actually get to Mars.'

The 'Generation Mars' proposal dovetails with one of the review panel's options setting out a flexible approach to exploration that begins with a five-year extension to the life of the International Space Station to 2020, and development of a new heavy-lift launch rocket.

Shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts are scheduled to return the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday after a nine-day stay at the space station to deliver supplies and prepare the outpost for its final U.S. connecting node.

The space shuttles are due to be retired late next year or early 2011 after six more missions to complete construction of the station, a £60billion project involving 16 nations.

The 'Generation Mars' Nasa proposal makes no mention of cost. The space programme review panel estimates that its similar option would need another $3 billion a year.

Sticking with the present program would give the United States its heavy-lift Ares 5 by about 2028, but there would be no money to develop a lunar lander or even a rocket motor to leave Earth's orbit.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1212186/Nasa-proposes-Mars-trip-Moon-mission-deemed-expensive.html#ixzz0QodOoXLL

NASA Builds World's Largest Space Parachute for Martian Landing

To survive the thin Martian atmosphere, the 2000-plus-lb. Mars Science Laboratory rover will depend on the largest space parachute ever built. Here’s how NASA’s next chute will work.

By Morgan Lord

Parachute Diameter: 52 feet. (Photograph by NASA).

When the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover lands on Mars in 2012, it will face a unique obstacle: With an Earth weight of nearly a ton (compared to about 400 pounds for previous Mars rovers) and a Mars weight of about 750 pounds, it is too massive for any existing space parachute. So to cushion its fall through the thin Martian atmosphere (which is less than 1 percent as dense as Earth’s), NASA engineers had to come up with something really big. The new parachute opens to a diameter of 52 feet, making it twice the size of any parachute ever flown beyond Earth.

To test the parachute, which was built by Pioneer Aerospace, NASA brought it into the world’s largest wind tunnel, located at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The parachute passed flight-qualification testing in April, and is now ready for the rover’s 2011 launch date.

• The parachute is designed to survive deployment in the Martian atmosphere at Mach 2.2, where it will generate 65,000 pounds of drag.

• The wind tunnel used to test the parachute is 80 feet tall and 120 feet wide, big enough to house a Boeing 737. It is part of the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex, operated by the U.S. Air Force.

• A nylon and polyester composition keeps the parachute’s total weight down to just 120 pounds.

• The parachute is held by 80 suspension lines, each 150 feet long. The parachute design—where there is a band of material, open space and a mushroom cap—is called a disk-gap-band.

Mars Parachute Photo Gallery
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1. RE: NASA Builds World's Largest Space Parachute for Martian Landing
Website: http://singedrac.livejournal.com
Hey I know that wind tunnel! I've been in it! Largest wind tunnel in the world. Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California. It's like a mile away from me.

Russia's Dark Horse Plan to Get to Mars

The Fobos-Grunt mission might pave the way for humanity's first permanent space base—on Phobos, Mars' bizarre moon. by Jamie Oberg

Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars has many unknowns. For instance, what formed the grooves that run across its surface?

Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Mars has been nothing but bad luck for the Russians. They have launched 20 probes to the planet since 1960, and all either failed or suffered from severe technical problems. But soon—as early as this October—Russia will attempt to reverse its fortunes with one of the most ambitious unmanned space missions ever.

Instead of aiming straight for Mars, the Russians are going after Phobos, the larger of its two little satellites and one of the oddest objects around. Their probe, called Fobos-Grunt (“Phobos soil” in Russian), will not only land on Phobos but also scoop up some samples of the surface and send them to Earth. Understanding Phobos could tell us a lot about the early history of the solar system. “It may give us clues to the formation of Earth’s moon and the moons of the other planets, and the role played by asteroid impacts in shaping the terrestrial [rocky] planets,” says Alexander Zakharov of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute and chief scientist for Fobos-Grunt. Even more important, this mission could lay the groundwork for an innovative strategy for exploring—and even colonizing—Mars itself.

Phobos is very different from our moon. It is a potato-shaped rock measuring only 12 miles by 17 miles, nearly as dark as coal, and dominated by a six-mile-wide crater called Stickney, evidence of a collision that nearly shattered the puny satellite. Phobos circles just 3,721 miles above the Martian surface (Earth’s moon averages a distance of 239,000 miles) and completes an orbit in 7 hours and 39 minutes, making a Phobos “month” on Mars less than one-third of a Martian day. In fact, Phobos circles so close to Mars that tidal forces are slowly causing its orbit to decay. Within the next few tens of millions of years it will crash into the planet; we are catching it at the tail end of its 4.5-billion-year life.

The same proximity to Mars that will one day doom Phobos makes it an extremely attractive staging post for human explorers. One side of Phobos always faces Mars, and on that “hemisphere” the planet dominates the sky. This makes Phobos a good place for monitoring most of the Martian surface. Moreover, any manned outpost on Phobos would be well shielded from space radiation—protected on one side by Mars and on the other by the satellite’s own bulk. From Phobos humans could explore the planet’s surface remotely using robots, eliminating the agonizing 10- to 20-minute delay that the operators of NASA’s Mars rovers currently have to endure. Phobos would also be a natural staging area for manned excursions to Mars.

Hebes Chasma, a Martian valley where water once flowed, could
be studied in detail from Phobos. Phobos's soil may also contain debris
blasted off Mars by ancient impacts

Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Before we start drawing up plans for outposts on Phobos, though, we need a much better grasp of what kind of place it is. Right now scientists do not even know exactly what Phobos is made of. It appears similar to a group of asteroids known as carbonaceous chondrites. These primitive objects contain amino acids, the building blocks of life, and appear to be nearly unchanged fragments of the material from which the solar system formed. Scientists have speculated that a rain of carbonaceous chondrites may have seeded early Earth with the raw material for biology here. Phobos’s distinctive composition has led some scientists to suspect that it (along with Deimos, Mars’s other miniature satellite) might be a captured asteroid. But that is far from a foregone conclusion.

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The surface of Phobos (left) is very different form that of the smaller Martian
moon Deimos. Scientists do not yet know why.

Image: NASA/JPL-Cal Tech/University of Arizona

“Phobos is a funny object,” says David Beatty, chief scientist of the NASA Mars Exploration Directorate. “It’s kind of a mystery why Phobos is there and where it came from.” RKA, the Russian space agency, hopes to get some answers by having Fobos-Grunt gather samples of Phobos’s battered surface. Back on Earth, detailed analysis will identify their precise composition and age. (A suite of onboard instruments will also do some analysis on Phobos.) From this we should get new insights into the history of Phobos and a broader snapshot of what our solar system was like in its formative days.

In this mission, Fobos-Grunt will get a huge assist from the laws of orbital mechanics. Owing to the counterintuitive rules of space navigation, it takes remarkably little energy to get to Phobos from Earth. In fact, the energy required to travel between two spots in the solar system has virtually nothing to do with the distance between them. What really matters is a quantity called delta-v, the amount that a spaceship’s velocity must change to shift from one trajectory to another. Delta-v depends on how strong the gravitational fields are at your departure and arrival points; how much energy you need to swing farther out from (or in toward) the sun; and how much assistance you can get from atmospheric braking—that is, skimming through a planet’s atmosphere to help slow down.

The total delta-v required for a mission to land on Phobos and come back is startlingly low—only about 80 percent that of a round trip to the surface of Earth’s moon. (That is in part because of Phobos’s feeble gravity; a well-aimed pitch could launch a softball off its surface.) It is actually easier to send a probe or cargo to Phobos than to the moon. The comparison for a manned flight is more complicated, since a crew would need much more food and air for the six-month journey to Phobos than for the three-day trip to our moon. But the huge additional delta-v needed to get down to the Mars surface and back up into orbit again means it would be vastly cheaper and easier to maintain an outpost on Phobos than on the Martian surface.

If the mission is successful, Fobos-Grunt will be the first probe to explore the Earth-Phobos-Earth space highway. The one-ton probe will enter orbit around Mars in August or September 2010 (assuming Russia’s schedule does not slip) and begin studying Phobos remotely. Once the mission scientists have selected a good landing spot, the spacecraft will touch down on the satellite’s surface sometime in March or April 2011. Then Fobos-Grunt will extend a robot arm and start collecting samples of regolith—surface soil and rocks—for return to Earth. The main body of the probe will serve as a launchpad for the small return module and remain permanently on Phobos. When the 233-pound return module reaches Earth in June or July 2012, it will drop off a soccer-ball-size capsule containing a thumb-size canister of precious Phobos soil; finally, the canister will make a hard landing in a remote region of Kazakhstan.

Planetary scientists hope that analysis of Phobos’s regolith will shed light on the nature of the satellite’s deep interior because of the turnover between the surface and the interior over the eons. Phobos’s density is very low, about two-thirds that of ordinary basalt. This could mean that it is similar to water-rich objects in the outer edge of the asteroid belt, or it could mean that Phobos is a rubble pile, with many empty cavities between rock fragments. “The single most important issue to address on Phobos regarding the future human exploration of Mars is the question of water,” says Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute, a research organization. “Does Phobos contain any water, and if so, in what amount, form, and location? Answers to these questions will help determine how we will travel to Mars.”

Owing to the rules of space navigation, it takes remarkably little energy to get from Phobos to Earth.

Phobos’s exterior poses some riddles of its own. Its most striking visual structures (aside from the giant Stickney crater) are sets of crater chains that line up across the surface. Deimos does not have anything like them, nor do any of the half-dozen regular asteroids imaged by space probes so far. One theory is that the craters are old steam vents, relics of an ancient catastrophe that cracked Phobos’s crust and heated its interior, sending steam blasting outward. This would be good news for future human visits to Mars, as vents would mark the location of water-bearing minerals, perhaps even buried deposits of water ice. Another, less enticing possibility is that the holes are crevices opened by tidal forces or by impacts that caused the entire moon to flex.

A third theory holds that the crater chains are tied to ancient impacts on Mars. Some meteor strikes in Mars’s past were powerful enough to propel pieces of the planet’s crust at speeds greater than escape velocity, some 3.1 miles per second. We know this because scientists have found meteorites on Earth that clearly originated on Mars; these pieces evidently drifted around the solar system before landing here. If some fragments of the Martian surface reached Earth, many more of them should have hit Phobos on the way out. The swarms of rocks sent flying by a major impact on Mars might have created the crater chains seen on Phobos. In fact, by some estimates, up to 10 percent of the satellite’s surface might consist of material that originated on Mars.

Seen in this light, Russia’s Fobos-Grunt strategy looks rather clever. Despite its low profile, Phobos may turn out to be one of the most intriguing places in the solar system. And, located in a sweet spot of accessibility, it is a natural outpost for future space exploration, whether with people or with probes. If there is a key stepping-stone from Earth to Mars, this odd, intriguing space rock could be it.

Weird New NASA Rovers Really Get Around

• By Lisa Grossman

At some point on their five-year journey, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have both gotten their feet stuck in the soil, and NASA is taking notes for the design of the next generation of rovers.

In 2005, Opportunity spent five weeks spinning her wheels in a dune later dubbed “Purgatory.” Last week, Spirit sank into a sandpit scientists are calling “Troy,” and could stay there for weeks — or forever.

But rovers of the future may have an easier time of it. NASA scientists are building an army of prototypes with new and ever weirder ways to rove.

CLIFFBOT

One of the toughest tasks for rovers is climbing steep slopes. Some of the most interesting bits of Martian geology, like exposed rocks on cliff faces or gullies in craters that might once have been flowing streams, are off-limits to Spirit and Opportunity. Anxious engineers fear a spill, or worry that once they’re in, they won’t be able to get back out.

The Cliffbot (known more formally as the Sample-Return Rover) gets around this by borrowing tricks from human mountaineers. It’s tethered to two “anchorbots” that belay it from the top of the cliff using modified fishing reels. This configuration lets it climb down 80 degree slopes to take pictures and soil samples at the bottom.

Cliffbot is already getting its feet dirty: It spent the past three summers doing field tests in Svalbard, Norway, where it froze its batteries off and dodged polar bears.

LEMUR

Another rover tackles the climbing problem with sheer dexterity. With a typically charming NASA acronym, the Lemur (Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robots) was designed to help build things in orbit. It can crawl along a segmented mirror and climb the walls in a rock gym. Engineers hope it will be able to place “holds” in rock and soil, like rock climbers do. And at just 18 inches across, it’s downright adorable.

ATHLETE

The behemoth Athlete (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) rover is based on the Lemur, but it’s anything but cuddly. Designed to carry people and equipment across the surface of the moon, it tackles tough terrain with sheer size. The prototype is four meters (about 13 feet) wide, and the rover is expected to be nearly twice that. It can roll up to six miles an hour on the lunar hills, while keeping the center of the vehicle perfectly level. That might not sound like much, but it’s more than 100 times as fast as the Mars rovers, which have each traversed about five miles in as many years. And unlike other rovers, it doesn’t just roll around. It can lift up its limbs to step over boulders (not to mention strike menacing scorpion-like poses).

Athlete would probably be used in tandem with a lunar rover like the one featured at Obama’s inauguration.

“It’s like retired people with their big Winnebago and the Jeep behind them,” said Richard Volpe, manager of Mobility and Robotics Systems Section of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “You park your Winnebago [in this case, Athlete] and it stays stationary for a week or two, and you do your little sorties in your Jeep.”

One way engineers imagine getting these colossal insects to the moon is to make them collapsible. They’d fold down into discs, stack up for the flight, and self-deploy on landing like giant robot spiders popping out of a Pringles can. Another is to have them split into two three-legged “Tri-Athletes” that can click back together or dock to other robots on the moon.

HOPPER

Able to leap small boulders in a single bound, this hopping robot doesn’t waste time on navigation. The prototype is so new it doesn’t have a catchy acronym yet, but it’s the latest in a long line of hopping robots, all designed to save the time and energy lost tiptoeing around obstacles. Most earlier hoppers landed on their heads and needed helmets to survive, which meant they couldn’t make long jumps or carry fragile equipment. This one deftly lands on its six spring-loaded feet. It can jump about a foot in the air on Earth, which would be six feet under lunar gravity. All six legs are also steerable, letting it take off and land at different angles. And it carries a small motorized gyroscope in its underbelly to keep it from tumbling mid-hop.

AXEL

The simplest proto-rover of them all, Axel is aptly named. It’s just two wheels connected to an axle. Its symmetry means it’s safe from one of the biggest rover worries on steep slopes: flipping over.

“Even if it’s turned upside-down it doesn’t matter, because upside-down is right-side-up,” Volpe said.

Like the Cliffbot, Axel would be tethered to a bigger rover that would stand at the top of a cliff. But Axel can take unprecedented amounts of abuse. Its wheels can be foldable or inflatable, letting it absorb a lot of impact on landing. It’s unperturbed by dangling in mid-air. It can carry scientific instruments in the cylinder that connects the two wheels, and could even take samples back the same way. All the tether rover needs to do is reel it back in when it’s done.

MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY

Most of these rovers are years away from seeing the dim light of space. According to Volpe, it typically takes 10 to 20 years from rover concept to deployment. But how will the next generation of Mars rovers handle the sand?

The Mars Science Laboratory, slated to launch in 2011, is based on the same basic system as Spirit and Opportunity, but twice as big.

“When it comes to rocky terrain, we can climb obstacles that are about twice as high or as deep as Spirit and Opportunity,” said mobility engineer Jaime Waydo. “In that undulating terrain where there’s rocks or holes, we do very well.”

But they haven’t solved the sand problem yet. “When it comes to sand, what you care about is something we call ground pressure, how much you float in the sand,” Waydo said. “MSL has the same ground pressure as Spirit and Opportunity, so when we start driving in sand, we expect the performance to be about the same.”

There’s an obvious trade-off at work: The heavier your rover, the more it sinks. MSL could be more buoyant if it had bigger wheels (which would be harder to ship) or took fewer instruments, but “that would be really sad,” Waydo said. “We could take less science, but that’s the whole reason we go.”

Images: NASA/JPL