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NASA may change MRO orbit to support Mars 2020

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WASHINGTON — NASA is considering changing the orbit of one of its oldest Mars spacecraft, a move intended to support the Mars 2020 mission after landing but which could affect both its science and support of other missions.

NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2005 with a suite of six science instruments, including a high-resolution camera. The spacecraft has increasingly been used as a communications relay, supporting spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

In 2018, concerned about aging components on the spacecraft, NASA proposed a potential change to the spacecraft’s orbit. MRO is currently in a sun-synchronous orbit that passes over surface at midafternoon. NASA proposed shifting the spacecraft into an orbit with a crossing time later in the day to reduce the amount of time in each orbit the spacecraft is in the planet’s shadow. That would reduce the workload on the spacecraft’s batteries and extend their lives.

At the time, NASA said it would defer a decision until after the landings of the InSight mission in November 2018 and Mars 2020 in February 2021. With Mars 2020 now weeks away from landing, that decision on whether to change MRO’s orbit is coming due.

“Our intent is to make a decision following the landing and initial operations of Mars 2020,” Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said at a Jan. 27 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).

While the change in orbit is intended to extend MRO’s life, some Mars scientists are concerned it could disrupt science. The different orbit would make it more difficult to compare new observations with earlier ones. It could also affect MRO’s ability to provide support to other missions, such as the Curiosity rover.

“We want to make sure we fully understand the benefits of staying in the current orbit and adjusting the orbit,” Ianson said. “I think people notionally have an idea about that, but I don’t think we’ve fully examined it and had a really in-depth discussion about it.”

Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, said at the MEPAG meeting that a potential change in the spacecraft’s orbit could have “a few other complications,” such as support for both Curiosity and the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission, now scheduled for launch in 2022 after it missed its mid-2020 launch window.

“We’re going to revisit it” after the Mars 2020 landing, he said, “and do what the real trades are, and make a decision on what the best thing is to do for overall Mars science.”

The communications infrastructure at Mars is a growing concern for scientists and mission planners. NASA has relied on orbiters launched primarily for science missions to serve as relays, including MRO as well as Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, and MAVEN, launched in 2013.

Proposals in recent years for new orbiter missions either devoted to communications or with communications as one of their primary roles have made little progress. The most recent concept, presented at meetings in late 2020, called for a network of three satellites with intersatellite links to provide continuous high-bandwidth communications for spacecraft both on the surface and in orbit. Those spacecraft could be developed in some kind of commercial partnership.

That concept is most closely tied to Mars Ice Mapper, a mission still in early development that will fly a radar mapping payload to look for subsurface ice deposits to support future robotic or human missions. That communications network, NASA officials said, would increase the amount of data that mission could return by a factor of 100.

Both Mars Ice Mapper and the proposed communications network will not launch until later in the decade, if approved. Ianson said a decision on changing MRO’s orbit to support Mars 2020 will be made “in the coming months.”

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Nasa’s Perseverance rover is bearing down on Mars

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The US space agency’s Perseverance rover is now just three weeks from arriving at Mars.

The robot and the Red Planet are still separated by some 4.5 million km (3 million miles), but this gap is closing at a rapid rate.

The biggest, most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to land on another planet, the Nasa robot is being targeted at a near-equatorial crater called Jezero.

Touchdown is expected shortly before 2100 GMT on Thursday 18 February.

To get down, the Nasa rover will have to survive what engineers call the “seven minutes of terror” – the time it takes to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface.

The “terror” is a reference to the daunting challenge that is inherent in trying to reduce an entry speed of 20,000km/h to something like walking pace at the moment of “wheels down”.

“When the scientists look at our landing site, Jezero Crater, they see the scientific promise of everything: the remains of an ancient river flowing in and flowing out of this crater and think that’s the place to go to look for signs of past life. But when I look at Jezero, I see danger,” says Allen Chen, the engineer who leads the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) effort for Perseverance.

“There’s danger everywhere. There’s this 60-80m-tall cliff that cuts right through the middle of our landing site. If you look to the west, there are craters that the rover can’t get out of even if we were to land successfully in one of them. And if you look to the east, there are large rocks that our rover would be very unhappy about if we put down on them,” he told BBC News.

Fortunately, Perseverance has some tried and tested technologies that should ensure it reaches a safe point on the surface. Among them is the famous “Skycrane” jet pack that successfully landed Nasa’s previous rover, Curiosity, eight years ago.

There are even some additions designed to improve reliability. The parachute system that slows the atmospheric descent from super- to sub-sonic speeds now has something called “range trigger”. This more precisely times the opening of the parachute to bring the rover closer to its notional bulls-eye.

Unlike Curiosity which just opened the chute when it reached a pre-determined velocity, Perseverance will check its surroundings first before issuing the command.

Allied to this is Terrain Relative Navigation. Perseverance will be examining the ground below and checking it against satellite imagery of the crater to better gauge its position.

It’s like you or I looking out the window of our car and then looking back at a map to see where we are, says Chen.

“That’s what we’re asking Perseverance to do on her own, to figure out where she is, and then fly to known safe spots that are nearby.”

Curiosity managed to touch down about a mile from the notional bulls-eye. It overshot slightly. Perseverance, with its enhanced landing technologies, should do much better.

Scientists have already named the area that includes the bulls-eye. It’s called Timanfaya, named after the Spanish national park in Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands.

The Lanzarote Timanfaya is a volcanic terrain; the Martian version, which encompasses a 1.2km by 1.2km square likely also includes some volcanic rock. It’s the floor of Jezero Crater.

Although this is the landing spot, it’s not the major interest for the mission. That’s the remnant delta just to the north, along with some more distant carbonate rocks which the researchers think may trace the edge of a once huge lake in Jezero.

“Carbonate rock is extremely abundant on Earth, but is quite rare on Mars and we’re not really sure why that is,” says Ken Farley, the Nasa project scientist on Perseverance.

“There’s a region on the edge of the crater that would have been the shore with a high concentration of carbonate. This is very attractive to us, because on Earth carbonate often is precipitated [by living organisms]: people will be familiar with things like coral reefs. And it is a good way to record bio-signatures,” he told BBC News.

Under the right conditions, stromatolites will form in shallow waters

The dream is Perseverance will stumble across fossil evidence of stromatolites. These are sedimentary deposits that have been built by layers, or mats, of micro-organisms.

The structures, and the chemistry within them, is recognisable to geologists. That said, we are talking about rocks in Jezero that are almost four billion years old.

Discoveries are unlikely to be of the slam-dunk variety, which is why Perseverance will package up its most interesting finds for later missions to retrieve and bring back to Earth for more detailed study.

Farley says Perseverance will be asking the most fundamental of questions and whatever answers its produces will be instructive.

“Is it a case of if you build a habitable environment then life will come? Or is it like a magic spark that also has to happen? And the answer to that question is really important, because we now know that there are billions, literally billions, of planets out there beyond Earth.

“What is the likelihood that life doesn’t exist out there? It seems small to me, but it all hinges on how ubiquitous that spark is that gets life going,” he explained.

The bulls-eye is in a square called Timanfaya. Carbonate rocks are coloured green

Originally published

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The UAE’s Hope mission is nearly to Mars, and scientists can’t wait

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With less than two weeks before the country’s first-ever interplanetary mission slips into orbit around Mars, United Arab Emirates scientists can’t wait for the Hope orbiter‘s arrival.

The UAE launched Hope in July 2020, one of three missions taking advantage of an optimal window to head to the Red Planet, along with China’s Tianwen-1 mission and NASA’s Perseverance rover. Hope is an orbiter designed to study the atmosphere of Mars around the planet and from surface to space. The mission will conduct its Mars orbit insertion maneuver on Feb. 9 beginning at about 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).

“Right now, the team has prepared as well as they can possibly prepare to reach orbit around Mars,” Sarah Al Amiri, chairperson of the UAE Space Agency, said during a news conference held virtually yesterday (Jan. 28). “We’re just counting down the final few days before we arrive to the Red Planet.”

Related: The United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission to Mars in photos

Fewer than half of Mars missions attempted to date have succeeded. In advance of the risky maneuver, which will involve Hope firing its thrusters for nearly half an hour to slow down enough to slip into orbit around Mars, the spacecraft is in excellent condition, mission personnel said.

“We are fortunate to have a very healthy spacecraft, and everything is looking very good at the moment,” Pete Withnell, Hope program manager at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics program, which partnered with the UAE on the mission, said during the news conference.

“I’m optimistic; that would be my primary emotion right now,” Withnell said. “But I can tell you many of the team are waking up at two o’clock in the morning in a cold sweat just thinking and rethinking about aspects.”

If all goes smoothly on Feb. 9, the UAE will notch a major accomplishment, becoming just the fifth entity to successfully reach Mars, after NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India. (China may follow fast on the UAE’s heels; the nation’s Tianwen-1 mission will complete its own Mars orbit insertion a day after Hope does.)

Before beginning the Hope mission, the UAE’s space experience was limited to satellites in Earth orbit; the nation’s first astronaut spent a week on the International Space Station in the fall of 2019. But in 2017, the country launched a century-scale Mars-focused initiative meant to build an oil-free economy and bulk up the nation’s technical sector.

Related: The UAE wants to rewrite what we know about weather on Mars

The UAE designed the Hope mission’s science goals in conjunction with the international community and built international partnerships, particularly with the University of Colorado, to complete the spacecraft, then hired a Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket to execute the launch on July 19.

Hope is meant to spend one Martian year, or nearly two Earth years, studying the Red Planet; that timeline will begin in May. During the mission, the spacecraft will orbit high over the planet’s equator to study the weather at the surface and how the layers of the planet’s atmosphere interact.

Even as Hope was making the long trek out to Mars, the UAE announced its next mission beyond Earth orbit. In 2024, the nation intends to launch its first lunar rover, Rashid, which will focus on developing and evaluating space exploration technologies. As with the Hope mission, the UAE will contract out Rashid’s launch rather than develop its own rocket technology.

But for the Hope team, the focus is all on Mars and all on the challenges of arriving safely.

“I think everyone on the mission understands the emotional roller coaster,” Al Amiri said. “Every point of celebration is followed by several points of worry, waiting for the next point of celebration.”

“I wish I could put it into words, but I’m probably every feeling that you can possibly think, both positive, negative and neutral.”

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover landing will be must-see TV

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An illustration of Perseverance during its descent to the Martian surface.


NASA

NASA is just weeks away from landing a shiny new robot on the surface of Mars, and for the first time, we’ll be able to see and hear what it’s like to touch down on another world.

Perseverance is due to land in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, becoming the first artificial object to land on the surface since the Mars Insight lander in 2018 and the first rover since Curiosity touched down in 2012.

But the new rover on the block is carrying more audio-visual gear than its predecessors to capture portions of the pivotal entry, descent and landing, or EDL, phase of the mission. A camera mounted on the back shell of the spacecraft is pointed up and will be able to catch a view of the parachutes that will deploy during descent to slow Perseverance as it comes in for its landing. Beneath this is a downward-pointing camera on the descent stage, which further slows and orients the rover for landing. 

Finally, the rover itself is equipped with cameras and a microphone. Altogether, this suite of tech should provide us with the most detailed images and audio of a landing on Mars yet.

“We’re going to be able to watch ourselves land for the first time on another planet,” Lori Glaze, who heads the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told reporters during a briefing Wednesday.

Perseverance carries its own audio-visual rigging.


NASA

The entire EDL phase will last only about seven minutes, but EDL lead Allen Chen calls it “the most critical and most dangerous part of the mission.”

Perseverance will hit the Martian atmosphere traveling at almost 12,000 miles per hour  (19,312 kilometers per hour), streaking across the sky as it begins to slow down. A 70-foot (21 meters) diameter parachute will deploy to slow it further. Afterward, its heat shield is released and radar is activated to help it determine its own location. 

At an altitude of about one mile (1.5 kilometers), the descent module fires its engines and a new terrain relative navigation system, or TRN, kicks in to identify a safe landing spot. TRN is basically a sort of computer vision that allows the spacecraft to look at the terrain below and match it up with maps in its database.


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This is how NASA’s Perseverance rover will get Mars rocks…



2:06

The system slows down to a literal crawl, and then it’s time for “sky crane,” the same sort of hovering landing system the Curiosity rover used, which will allow Perseverance to basically lower itself softly to the surface.

This whole process will be fully automated without any input from mission control because of the delay in sending radio signals back and forth from Mars to the Earth.

Perseverance carries a number of science instruments to help look for signs of ancient life on our neighboring world, to collect samples that will be returned to Earth and to test some technologies for future Mars missions.

Also, it has a tiny helicopter.

Robots have spent years rolling around Mars, which is pretty cool, but for the first time NASA will use a small helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, to try flying around the planet.


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How NASA’s Mars helicopter could change the future of…



5:20

But before Ingenuity can fly, Perseverance has to nail its landing first. While its cameras and microphones will capture much of this whole process, there won’t be a live feed like we’ve become accustomed to from the International Space Station or most launches from Earth. That’s because the data relay Perseverance will be using during EDL is slower than even old dial-up connections.

However, after landing it will be able to use the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to send images back to Earth. Chen estimates that we’ll be able to see at least some low-res images of the environment around Perseverance on the surface shortly after landing. We may have to wait a few days for more imagery and audio that paint the full picture of the landing process.

We will, however, have live feeds from mission control, which provided some of the more iconic images from the Curiosity landing. (Mohawk guy, anyone?) Of course, COVID-19 protocols will be in effect at mission control, but it’s unlikely that even the pandemic will dampen the celebration of a successful landing.

“I don’t think that Covid is going to be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist bumping,” said Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace. “You’re going to see a lot of happy people no matter what, once we get this thing on the surface safely.”

Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar. 

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NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover landing will be must-see TV

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An illustration of Perseverance during its descent to the Martian surface.


NASA

NASA is just weeks away from landing a shiny new robot on the surface of Mars, and for the first time, we’ll be able to see and hear what it’s like to touch down on another world.

Perseverance is due to land in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, the first artificial object to land on the surface since the Mars Insight lander in 2018 and the first rover since Curiosity touched down in 2012.

But the new rover on the block is carrying more audio-visual gear than its predecessors to capture portions of the pivotal entry, descent and landing, or EDL, phase of the mission. A camera mounted on the back shell of the spacecraft is pointed up and will be able to catch a view of the parachutes that will deploy during descent to slow Perseverance as it comes in for its landing. Beneath this is a downward-pointing camera on the descent stage, which further slows and orients the rover for landing. 

Finally, the rover itself is equipped with cameras and a microphone. Altogether, this suite of tech should provide us with the most detailed images and audio of a landing on Mars yet.

“We’re going to be able to watch ourselves land for the first time on another planet,” Lori Glaze, who heads the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told reporters during a briefing Wednesday.

Perseverance carries its own audio-visual rigging.


NASA

The entire EDL phase will last only about seven minutes, but EDL lead Allen Chen calls it “the most critical and most dangerous part of the mission.”

Perseverance will hit the Martian atmosphere traveling at almost 12,000 miles per hour  (19,312 kilometers per hour), streaking across the sky as it begins to slow down. A 70-foot (21 meters) diameter parachute will deploy to slow it further. Afterward, its heat shield is released and radar is activated to help it determine its own location. 

At an altitude of about one mile (1.5 kilometers), the descent module fires its engines and a new terrain relative navigation system, or TRN, kicks in to identify a safe landing spot. TRN is basically a sort of computer vision that allows the spacecraft to look at the terrain below and match it up with maps in its database.


Now playing:
Watch this:

This is how NASA’s Perseverance rover will get Mars rocks…



2:06

The system slows down to a literal crawl, and then it’s time for “sky crane,” the same sort of hovering landing system the Curiosity rover used, which will allow Perseverance to basically lower itself softly to the surface.

This whole process will be fully automated without any input from mission control because of the delay in sending radio signals back and forth from Mars to the Earth.

Perseverance carries a number of science instruments to help look for signs of ancient life on our neighboring world, to collect samples that will be returned to Earth and to test some technologies for future Mars missions.

Also, it has a tiny helicopter.

Robots have spent years rolling around Mars, which is pretty cool, but for the first time NASA will use a small helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, to try flying around the planet.


Now playing:
Watch this:

How NASA’s Mars helicopter could change the future of…



5:20

But before Ingenuity can fly, Perseverance has to nail its landing first. While its cameras and microphones will capture much of this whole process, there won’t be a live feed like we’ve become accustomed to from the International Space Station or most launches from Earth. That’s because the data relay Perseverance will be using during EDL is slower than even old dial-up connections.

However, after landing it will be able to use the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to send images back to Earth. Chen estimates that we’ll be able to see at least some low-res images of the environment around Perseverance on the surface shortly after landing. We may have to wait a few days for more imagery and audio that paint the full picture of the landing process.

We will, however, have live feeds from mission control, which provided some of the more iconic images from the Curiosity landing. (Mohawk guy, anyone?) Of course, COVID-19 protocols will be in effect at mission control, but it’s unlikely that even the pandemic will dampen the celebration of a successful landing.

“I don’t think that Covid is going to be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist bumping,” said Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace. “You’re going to see a lot of happy people no matter what, once we get this thing on the surface safely.”

Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar. 

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Mars rover landing: Perseverance will begin ‘epic journey’ on Mars next month

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The rover, which is the largest and most advanced rover NASA has ever built, will act as a robotic geologist, collecting samples of dirt and rocks that will eventually be returned to Earth by the 2030s.

For that reason, Perseverance is also the cleanest machine ever sent to Mars, designed so it doesn’t contaminate the Martian samples with any microbes from Earth, providing a false reading.

The mission teams have made many modifications due to the pandemic, but they have adapted to work safely and effectively. The team that will be at JPL during the landing conducted an adapted simulation of the landing that transpired last week over three days.

“Don’t let anybody tell you different — landing on Mars is hard to do,” said John McNamee, project manager for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL, in a statement. “But the women and men on this team are the best in the world at what they do. When our spacecraft hits the top of the Mars atmosphere at about three-and-a-half miles per second, we’ll be ready.”

Perseverance is the latest step in NASA’s long history of exploring the red planet. It builds on lessons learned from previous missions with new goals that will shed more light on the history of Mars.

“NASA has been exploring Mars since Mariner 4 performed a flyby in July of 1965, with two more flybys, seven successful orbiters, and eight landers since then,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement.

“Perseverance, which was built from the collective knowledge gleaned from such trailblazers, has the opportunity to not only expand our knowledge of the Red Planet, but to investigate one of the most important and exciting questions of humanity about the origin of life both on Earth and also on other planets.”

The spacecraft, launched in July, only has about 25.6 million miles left of its 292.5 million-mile adventure from Earth to Mars. And once it arrives at Mars, the rover’s journey to the planet’s surface starts with a bang.

The teams at NASA call it the “seven minutes of terror.”

And just weeks after the landing, video cameras and microphones on the spacecraft will show the rover’s perspective of this harrowing experience.

‘Seven minutes of terror’

The one-way light time it takes for radio signals to travel from Earth to Mars is about 10.5 minutes, which means the seven minutes it takes for the spacecraft to land on Mars will occur without any help or intervention from NASA teams on Earth.

This is the “seven minutes of terror.” The ground teams tell the spacecraft when to begin EDL (entry, descent and landing) and the spacecraft takes over from there.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most critical and dangerous part of the mission, according to Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent, and landing lead at JPL.

“It is not guaranteed that we will be successful,” Zurbuchen acknowledged. The mission teams, however, have done everything they can to prepare for a successful landing.

This rover is the heaviest that NASA has ever attempted to land, weighing in at over a metric ton.

The spacecraft hits the top of the Martian atmosphere moving at 12,000 miles per hour and has to slow down to zero miles per hour seven minutes later when the rover softly lands on the surface.

It will streak across the Martian sky like a meteor, Chen said.

About 10 minutes before entering the thin Martian atmosphere, the cruise stage that has carried the spacecraft on its journey through space is shed and the rover prepares for a guided entry, where small thrusters on the aeroshell help adjust its angle.

The spacecraft’s heat shield will endure peak heating of 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit, 75 seconds after entering the atmosphere.

Perseverance is targeting a 28-mile-wide ancient lake bed and river delta, the most challenging site yet for a NASA spacecraft landing on Mars. Rather than being flat and smooth, the small landing site is littered with sand dunes, steep cliffs, boulders and small craters.

The spacecraft has two upgrades — called Range Trigger and Terrain-Relative Navigation — to navigate this difficult and hazardous site.

Range Trigger will tell the 70.5-foot-wide parachute when to deploy based on the spacecraft’s position 240 seconds after entering the atmosphere. After the parachute deploys, the heat shield will detach.

The rover’s Terrain-Relative Navigation acts like a second brain, using cameras to take pictures of the ground as it rapidly approaches and determines the safest spot to land. It can shift the landing spot by up to 2,000 feet, according to NASA.

The back shell and parachute separate after the heat shield is discarded when the spacecraft is 1.3 miles above the Martian surface. The Mars landing engines, which include eight retrorockets, will fire to slow the descent from 190 miles per hour to about 1.7 miles per hour.

Then, the famed sky crane maneuver that landed the Curiosity rover will occur. Nylon cords will lower the rover 25 feet below the descent stage. After the rover touches down on the Martian surface, the cords will detach and the descent stage will fly away and land at a safe distance.

On the surface of Mars

Once the rover has landed, Perseverance’s two-year mission will begin, and it will go through a “checkout” period to make sure it’s ready.

The rover will also find a nice, flat surface to drop the Ingenuity helicopter so it has a place to use as a helipad for its potential five test flights during a 30-day period. This will occur within the first 50 to 90 sols, or Martian days, of the mission.

Once Ingenuity is settled on the surface, Perseverance will drive to a safe spot at a distance and use its cameras to watch Ingenuity’s flight.

This will be the first flight of a helicopter on another planet.

After those flights, Perseverance will begin searching for evidence of ancient life, study Mars’ climate and geology and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth via planned future missions. It will drive three times faster than previous rovers.

Jezero Crater was chosen as Perseverance’s home because billions of years ago, the basin was the site of a lake and river delta. Rocks and dirt from this basin could provide fossilized evidence of past microbial life, as well as more information about what ancient Mars was like.

“Perseverance’s sophisticated science instruments will not only help in the hunt for fossilized microbial life, but also expand our knowledge of Martian geology and its past, present, and future,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020, in a statement.

“Our science team has been busy planning how best to work with what we anticipate will be a firehose of cutting-edge data. That’s the kind of ‘problem’ we are looking forward to.”

The path Perseverance will traverse is about 15 miles long, an “epic journey” that will take years, Farley said. What scientists could discover about Mars, though, is worth the journey.

Perseverance also carries instruments that could help further exploration on Mars in the future, like MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. This experiment, about the size of a car battery, will attempt to convert Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Not only could this help NASA scientists learn how to produce rocket fuel on Mars, but also oxygen that could be use during future human exploration of the red planet.

“The mission provides hope and unity,” Zurbuchen said. “As our cosmic neighbor, Mars continues to captivate our imagination.”

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Solar Orbiter delivers sparkling view of Venus, Earth and Mars

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ESA and NASA’s Solar Orbiter took the images of Venus, Earth, and Mars used in this GIF on Nov. 18, 2020.


ESA/NASA/NRL/Solar Orbiter/SolOHI

Here on Earth, we’re using to looking up and spotting other planets in our solar system, but it’s eye-opening when our mechanical emissaries peer back and see us among the stars.

Solar Orbiter launched in early 2020 on a mission to study the sun, but it’s been doing some sightseeing in its spare time. The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured a lovely scene late last year when it saw Venus, Earth and Mars against a backdrop of stars. 

The Venus, Earth and Mars trifecta came in November when the orbiter’s Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) camera spotted the planets while the spacecraft was heading for a Venus flyby. 

ESA just released the scene as a short video. Venus is the brightest planet off to the left of the image. Earth is in the middle and Mars is fainter and down in the lower right corner.

“Stars are visible in the background, appearing to move in Solar Orbiter’s recording while the spacecraft travels around the sun,” ESA said in a statement on Tuesday.  

The Solar Orbiter portrait of Earth and friends fits in nicely with a history of views from elsewhere in the solar system. For comparison, you can see what Earth looks like from Mars and what it looked like to NASA’s Voyager 1 back in 1990. It helps put our place in the universe into perspective.

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In Iceland, Testing the Drones That Could Be the Future of Mars Exploration

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On February 18, 2021, if all goes to plan, NASA’s Perseverance rover will land on Mars. While it’s poking around, looking for signs of past habitability, Ingenuity—a tiny, experimental solar-powered helicopter hitching a ride on its underside—will try to demonstrate the possibility of flight on another world for the very first time. We may be looking at the future of exploration on the Red Planet.

Back here on Earth, others are already looking beyond Ingenuity. A next-generation NASA-funded Mars mission concept, the Rover-Aerial Vehicle Exploration Network or RAVEN, is about to be put through its paces in a gauntlet like no other. The project will pair an autonomous rover with specialized drones and be sent across a 32-square-mile lava field in Iceland as a test run for a future on Mars.

Interplanetary rovers are technological marvels, but they’re stuck to the ground. Drones, in one form or another, are the next evolutionary step, and they will be used for more than just reconnaissance. With scoops and drills, eventually they will “go somewhere the rover can’t go, and bring something back,” says Christopher Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and lead researcher on RAVEN.

Hamilton launching a drone in Iceland. Courtesy Christopher Hamilton/The University of Arizona

There’s no mistaking the impact drones are having on science right now. During the prolific eruption of Hawai‘i’s Kīlauea volcano in 2018, the government authorized the largest peaceful deployment of drones in American history. Spearheaded by longtime drone advocate Angie Diefenbach, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory, they were used to film lava fountains up close, track the slithering progression of molten rock, and even help people escape their homes in the dead of night.

Today, the U.S. Geological Survey has a dedicated drone program, catching up with universities across the world that are using them to reach inaccessible or dangerous places for scientific research. “It’s the age of the drones,” says Diefenbach. “We’re going to do so many cool things.”

Not long ago, the most advanced drones “were all in the hands of the military,” says Gordon Osinski, a planetary scientist at the University of Western Ontario and RAVEN team member. Now you can buy pretty capable ones online or at your local computer store. Bit by bit, he says, drones “are changing how we do fieldwork on Earth. And I think it’s definitely going to do the same for other planets.”

Drones will be able to provide powerful, unprecedented views of Martian landscapes, just as they do in Iceland. Courtesy Christopher Hamilton/The University of Arizona

Scientists are getting very good at piloting drones down here, but flying on Mars is going to be tougher. The air density is a fraction of Earth’s, so any mechanical aviators will need to push a lot more of it to get any elevation—hence Ingenuity’s test run. While engineers grappled with this challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory back in 2014, the Bárðarbunga volcanic system in Iceland erupted. Between August 2014 and February 2015, it spilled enough lava to easily smother Manhattan, making it Iceland’s largest eruption in 230 years.

The lava flow, as it cooked ice and water trapped below, developed a hydrothermal system with hot springs that became home to many happy microbes. By 2021, things had cooled, but vestiges of those bastions of life still exist, creating an environment similar to what researchers hope to be able to identify on Mars. To the tune of $3.1 million, NASA agreed with Hamilton that it would be a great place to test the next generation of automated Mars explorers, and RAVEN was born.

There are two components to RAVEN. The first is the rover. Courtesy of the Canadian Space Agency, it’s comparable to Curiosity in capability and design. It can be remotely operated by a human, (on Mars there would be several minutes of delay between commands and action) but it’s also able to navigate the land all on its own.

Christopher Hamilton with the RAVEN rover. Courtesy Christopher Hamilton/The University of Arizona

The real innovation of the project will be in its cargo. The drone is a carbon fiber hexacopter, capable of flying for around 35 minutes and up to a distance of three miles, carrying about 20 pounds of scientific equipment. It will act as the more technologically capable rover’s field assistant.

A camera will be one key instrument, but for more than just aerial photographs. It can take several different photographs of the same surface feature, and then send them to the rover, where heftier processors will make true 3D maps of terrain—“a full virtual rendering of the environment around the drone and rover,” says Hamilton. These, in turn, will help it navigate precisely and speedily around the area.

The drone will also use a visible to near-infrared spectrometer, which looks at radiation coming off the ground to identify any interesting minerals or substances. But the drone has another killer app.

NASA is laser-focused on bringing pristine Mars rocks back to Earth. Perseverance will dig up and cache 43 pen-sized rock samples that, through a series of upcoming NASA and European Space Agency missions, will be brought to Earth by 2031. While this robotic Rube Goldberg machine plays out, RAVEN will be testing a new way to grab samples in Iceland.

“My favorite part of RAVEN is the Claw,” says Hamilton. This refers to a scoop, or a series of scoop designs, that will be attached to the drone. Rocks of interest will be picked up and flown back to the rover, where the rover’s chemical-interrogating technology will see if the rock is fascinating enough to go visit the site where it came from, either to see the original context or get a bigger sample.

Scientists are looking to use that same concept for their Earthbound drones too. “The most exciting bit was to see the Claw attached to it, because that’s exactly where I’d like to go in the next year, for the [U.S. Geological Survey] at least,” says Diefenbach, for applications here. “That made me pretty excited.”

The team’s engineering partner, Honeybee Robotics, is coming up with drill designs, too, to pull out small cylindrical cores or grind rock into powder that can be vacuumed up and flown to the rover.

Steam blowing off Iceland’s Holuhraun lava field. Courtesy Christopher Hamilton/The University of Arizona

This year, RAVEN’s hardware is being manufactured and software is being coded while its hardware is manufactured. The games will begin in summer 2022, when the rover and drones arrive at Bárðarbunga volcano’s Holuhraun Lava Field.

The actual first test of the equipment reads like the instructions of a practical final exam. An operations team unfamiliar with the site, which will include students, will use satellite imagery to determine where best to “land” the rover and drones. They will issue commands to both vehicles and, within a set amount of time measured in Mars-days, then characterize the environment’s geology and identify potentially habitable or once-habitable pockets of it. In addition to testing RAVEN’s technology, the test will determine if a team new to the site will be able to identify the most astrobiologically areas to study—just as a future rover-drone Mars mission will have to. “I can’t participate in the science planning for our team, because I have the answer key,” Hamilton says, since he already knows the site, and the areas with the best potential for exploration. After the trial ends, and the team compares notes, they’ll run it back in summer 2023.

Hamilton can picture the time where RAVEN, or something like it, is deployed on Mars for real. By that stage, he says, “there is the possibility that the rover would be an astronaut.” Imagine that, not science fiction but real: spacefaring scientists, flying drones over Martian volcanoes, searching for alien biosignatures in the hazy light of the distant sun, the Earth (and Iceland’s lava fields) a bluish dot in the sky.

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Science

Sweet View From Deep Space Shows Earth, Venus, and Mars in a Single Frame

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Video created from a series of still images taken by Solar Orbiter. The brightest objects, from left to right, are Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Gif: ESA/NASA/NRL/Solar Orbiter/SolOHI/Gizmodo

Well, here’s something you don’t see every day.

On November 18, 2020, the Solar Orbiter managed to capture three of our solar system’s eight planets in a single frame, according to a European Space Agency statement. The resulting four-second movie was stitched together from a series of still images taken across 22 hours.

Venus is the largest and brightest of the objects, followed by Earth and then Mars to the lower right of the frame. What’s particularly cool about this vantage point is that the probe is peering back into the solar system as it heads away from the Sun and towards Venus.

Venus, Earth, and Mars, as spotted by the Solar Orbiter.
Image: ESA/NASA/NRL/Solar Orbiter/SolOHI

When the photos were taken, Solar Orbiter was 30 million miles (48 million km) from Venus, 156 million miles (251 million km) from Earth, and 206 million miles (332 million km ) from Mars. The Sun is out of frame to the lower right, but its glow is clearly visible.

The spacecraft, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, was en route to Venus for a gravitational assist when the images were taken using its Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) camera. Solar Orbiter eventually flew past Venus on December 27. A steady diet of flybys with Earth and Venus will bring the probe closer to the Sun and also tilt its axis of orbit such that it can observe the Sun from different angles.

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Launched in February 2020 and equipped with 10 different instruments, Solar Orbiter is a mission to study the Sun from up-close. The closest images ever taken of the Sun, made last July, showed previously unknown “campfires” on the surface of our star, uncovering stellar processes only dreamed about in theory.

The probe is also studying conditions in its immediate vicinity, namely the solar wind, or charged particles, pouring out from the Sun into space. The resulting data will help scientists to predict inclement space weather that can harm communications and technology on Earth.

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Science

6 Things to Know About NASA’s Mars Helicopter on Its Way to Mars

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2. Mars won’t make it easy for Ingenuity to attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Because the Mars atmosphere is so thin, Ingenuity is designed to be light, with rotor blades that are much larger and spin much faster than what would be required for a helicopter of Ingenuity’s mass on Earth.

The Red Planet also has beyond bone-chilling temperatures, with nights as cold as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius) at Jezero Crater, the rover and helicopter’s landing site. These temperatures will push the original design limits of the off-the-shelf parts used in Ingenuity. Tests on Earth at the predicted temperatures indicate Ingenuity’s parts should work as designed, but the team is looking forward to the real test on Mars.

“Mars isn’t exactly pulling out the welcome mat,” said Tim Canham, Ingenuity’s operations lead at JPL. “One of the first things Ingenuity has to do when it gets to Mars is just survive its first night.”

3. Ingenuity relies on the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission for safe passage to Mars and for operations on the Red Planet’s surface.

Ingenuity is nestled sideways under the belly of the Perseverance rover with a cover to protect it from debris kicked up during landing. Both the rover and the helicopter are safely ensconced inside a clamshell-like spacecraft entry capsule during the 293-million-mile (471-million-kilometer) journey to Mars. The power system on the Mars 2020 spacecraft periodically charges Ingenuity’s batteries on the way there.

To reach the Martian surface, Ingenuity rides along with Perseverance as it lands. The rover’s entry, descent, and landing system features a supersonic parachute, new “brains” for avoiding hazards autonomously, and components for the sky crane maneuver, which lowers the rover onto Mars from a descent vehicle. Only about 50% of the attempts to land on Mars, by any space agency, have been successful.

Once a suitable site to deploy the helicopter is found, the rover’s Mars Helicopter Delivery System will shed the landing cover, rotate the helicopter to a legs-down configuration, and gently drop Ingenuity on the surface in the first few months after landing. Throughout the helicopter’s commissioning and flight test campaign, the rover will assist with the communications back-and-forth from Earth. The rover team also plans to collect images of Ingenuity.

4. Ingenuity is smart for a small robot.

Delays are an inherent part of communicating with spacecraft across interplanetary distances, which means Ingenuity’s flight controllers at JPL won’t be able to control the helicopter with a joystick. In fact, they won’t be able to look at engineering data or images from each flight until well after the flight takes place.

So Ingenuity will make some of its own decisions based on parameters set by its engineers on Earth. The helicopter has a kind of programmable thermostat, for instance, that will keep it warm on Mars. During flight, Ingenuity will analyze sensor data and images of the terrain to ensure it stays on the flight path designed by project engineers.

5. The Ingenuity team counts success one step at a time.

Given Ingenuity’s experimental nature, the team has a long list of milestones the helicopter must reach before it can take off and land in the spring of 2021. The team will celebrate each milestone:

  • Surviving the cruise to Mars and landing on the Red Planet
  • Safely deploying to the surface from Perseverance’s belly
  • Autonomously keeping warm through the intensely cold Martian nights
  • Autonomously charging itself with the solar panel atop its rotors
  • Successfully communicating to and from the helicopter via a subsystem known as the Mars Helicopter Base Station on the rover

If the first experimental flight test on another planet succeeds, the Ingenuity team will attempt more test flights.

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