Mars On A Budget Nasa Wants To Explore Our Nearest Neighbor With Russian Help, Robots And A Reverence For A Dollar
Yo, Martians! If any of you are out there, be warned. After a 20-year absence, you’re about to be invaded by a fleet of small, smart robots from Earth.
The first of a dozen unmanned spaceships destined for Mars is ready for an early November launching.
Within days, two more vessels - one American and one Russian - stuffed with scientific gear will take off on parallel 475 million-mile cruises to the Red Planet, arriving next summer. Between now and 2005, at least two more missions are planned every 25 months, when Mars and Earth are properly aligned in their orbits around the sun.
Some ships will deposit robotic landers to rove the Martian surface. Others will hover in the thin atmosphere, inspecting every mountain and valley with high-tech instruments. No other heavenly body, not even our own Moon, will be subject to such intense scrutiny - perhaps because it could become the first planet to be visited by humans.
With its distinctive reddish hue - due to oxidized iron, or rust, in the soil and rocks - Mars has always fascinated humans. Two out of three Americans favor sending a manned expedition to the planet, according to a recent poll by the Roper Organization.
The Mars missions - eight American, two Russian, one European and one Japanese - have three goals:
To search for signs of life, past or present, on the only other planet in the solar system likely to contain it.
To prove that planets can be explored much more economically and efficiently than in the past, when giant spacecraft costing a billion dollars or more roamed the solar system.
The new Mars Exploratory Program is designed to showcase the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s current slogan: “better, faster, cheaper.” It’s budgeted at $1.3 billion over 10 years, barely half the cost of operating the space shuttle fleet for one year.
To pave the way for a possible human excursion to Mars sometime in the next 25 years and, ultimately, permanent settlement of the planet - a dream of NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. Before the first manned flight is undertaken, “we’re going to darken the skies with precursor robots,” Goldin told a conference on Mars at the National Academy of Sciences held recently.
The robots’ duties include learning how to produce breathable air, water and fuel from elements they find on the planet, since it would be impractical to ship them all the way from Earth.
“We need robots that can see, hear, smell, feel and be trained,” Goldin said. “We need ‘thinking’ spacecraft that can sense when something is wrong and take action to fix it.”
The first of the new Martian landers, named Pathfinder, is scheduled - by NASA’s precise timing to touch down on the planet’s surface at 2 p.m. EDT, next July 4.
“Turn on your computer; it’ll be on the Internet,” Goldin said. “You’ll even get a Martian weather report: cold, dry, high winds, no oxygen,” he predicted.
The Mars missions include a number of experimental technologies designed to save time and money. For example, Pathfinder’s landing will be cushioned by a cocoon of 16 huge air bags. When it hits the rocky surface, the padded spaceship will bounce as high as a 10-story building and roll around until it comes to a safe stop.
At that point, the air bags will automatically deflate; the metal skin of the vessel will open like the petals of a flower, and a little robotic “rover” will roll down a ramp onto the Martian soil.
The rover, called Sojourner, looks rather like a bread box on wheels. It weighs only 22 pounds, measures 26 by 19 inches, and stands 13 inches high. A small on-board computer will control its six wheels, steer it around obstacles and aim its three cameras at promising targets.
The rover has to be somewhat self-reliant because, even with radio waves traveling at the speed of light, it can take as long as 41 minutes to communicate with its human controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s about as smart as a bug,” said Donna Shirley, Mars program manager.
When the next American spaceship, the Mars Global Surveyor, arrives in September 1997, it will spend four months in a delicate maneuver known as “aerobraking” to settle it into orbit about Mars. Instead of burning expensive rocket fuel, Surveyor will surf along the top of the thin Martian atmosphere, relying on drag to slow its descent.
“It’s going to be tricky,” Shirley said. “We’ll be chewing our fingernails, but it’s the only way we can afford to do it.”
Surveyor will spend two years in a polar orbit. Its three cameras will photograph the entire planet every day, picking out objects as small as an automobile. (The smallest things the Viking cameras could see were the size of a football field.)
Surveyor will carry spare copies of most of the scientific instruments that were lost when a previous mission, the Mars Observer, was lost in 1993. It will look especially at dried-up rivers and lake beds, where ancient life forms may have left their traces.
A Russian spacecraft known as Mars ‘96 is also due to arrive next September. Eight times heavier than Pathfinder or Surveyor, it will send down two small scientific stations to monitor the planet’s environment on the ground.
In addition, the ship will drop two “penetrators,” 220-pound, needle-nosed objects that are supposed to plunge up to 20 feet below the surface and report what they find.
As a symbol of Russian-American togetherness, the Russians will use Surveyor to relay information back to Earth. “We’re going to explore Mars together with Russians,” Goldin said, explaining that cooperation has replaced Cold War competition.
Future Mars missions include:
1998: A new orbiter succeeding Surveyor with more powerful instruments, and a second lander to explore the territory near the south polar ice cap. The lander has a 6-foot robotic arm to dig trenches in the soil to study Mars’ geology.
2001: A third orbiter and lander in partnership with Russia. NASA is starting a contest for the most promising scientific ideas, such as a search for fossils of primitive life.
2003: An American orbiter and an international network of landers, in cooperation with France, Germany and Italy. Specifics have not been determined.
2005: An attempt to land a spaceship, pick up a sample of Martian soil and return it to Earth for scientific study.
1. The next steps in Mars exploration 2. Mission to Mars