NASA's Next Mars Rover Will Search for Signs of Life

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA's Next Mars Rover Will Search for Signs of Life
SPACE.com
Mike Wall 20 hours ago
 

A sketch of the design for NASA's 2020 Mars rover.

NASA's next Mars rover should hunt for signs of past Red Planet life and collect samples for eventual return to Earth, a team of mission planners has determined.

The new Mars rover — slated to launch in 2020 — should explore a site that once was habitable, make its own observations and snag material for scientists here on Earth to study in unprecedented detail at some point in the future, according to a new report compiled by the mission's "science definition team" (SDT).

"The SDT-preferred mission concept employs new in situ scientific instrumentation in order to seek signs of past life (had it been there), select and store a compelling suite of samples in a returnable cache and demonstrate technology for future robotic and human exploration of Mars," states the report, which was released to the public today (July 9).

The 2020 Mars rover will be based heavily on NASA's Curiosity rover, which touched down last August on a mission to determine if Mars could ever have supported microbial life.

For example, the new robot will use a similar chassis and "sky crane" landing system, NASA officials have said. But the new robot will take the science to a whole new level.

"The 2020 rover as proposed by the Science Definition Team would carry a different and more advanced set of science instruments than Curiosity carries, its drill would extract cores rather than blended powder from rocks and it would collect and package samples for possible future return to Earth," NASA officials wrote today in an FAQ about the SDT's report.

Just what those instruments will be is unclear at the moment; they will be selected through a competitive process. But the science gear will search for visual, mineralogical and chemical signs of past life if the SDT recommendations are adopted.

"The capability for examining the mineralogic composition of samples at microscopic scale would be unprecedented for a mission to Mars," NASA officials wrote in the FAQ. "The search for potential signs of past life could use assessments of textures, shapes, mineralogy, organic-matter content, and possibly elemental chemistry at the scale of individual grains within a sample."

The rover would also gather and store samples for potential return to Earth by a future mission (the timing and details of which are yet to be determined). Sample-return is viewed by most scientists as the best way to look for signs of Red Planet life.

The new rover's landing site has not been selected yet, officials said, and its power source similarly has not been confirmed.

Curiosity is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which converts the heat generated by radioactive decay into electricity. The 2020 rover may follow suit, but it's also possible that it could run on solar power, like NASA's smaller Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on Mars in 2004.

"No final decision on a power source for the 2020 rover would be made until the mission completes a review through the National Environmental Policy Act process, which considers the environmental impacts of launching and conducting the mission," NASA officials wrote in the FAQ.

Curiosity's mission cost a total of $2.5 billion. The 2020 rover is expected to be significantly cheaper, with a total price tag estimated at around $1.5 billion.

The new 2020 rover mission was announced this past December, and the SDT was formed in January.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-next-mars-rover-search-signs-life-194134699.html

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA Will Discuss 2020 Mars Rover Launch Today: How to Listen Live
SPACE.com
Tariq Malik July 9, 2013


NASA officials will discuss plans for the next big U.S. rover to land on Mars, a car-sized robot slated to launch toward the Red Planet in 2020.

During a teleconference today at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), scientists will "provide details about a report that will help define science objectives for the agency's next Mars rover," NASA officials said in an announcement.

You can follow the Mars 2020 teleconference live on SPACE.com here, courtesy of NASA.

"The report, prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team (SDT) NASA appointed in January, is an early, crucial step in developing the mission and the rover's prime science objectives," NASA officials added. [Boldest Missions to Mars of All Time]

NASA's Mars 2020 rover is a solar-powered robot expected to be based heavily on the agency's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which landed the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover on the Martian surface in August 2012.

Curiosity is a 1-ton rover about the size of a Mini Cooper car that is equipped with 12 different science instrument sets, including a suite of cameras, a mast-mounted laser and a drill on its robotic arm. The huge rover landed on Mars in a completely new way, using a rocket-powered sky crane to hover over the Martian surface while Curiosity itself was lowered to the ground on cables. Mars 2020 is expected to use a similar system.

Because of the Mars 2020 rover's anticipated similarity in design to Curiosity, the new robot is expected to cost about $1.5 billion, significantly less than its predecessor, NASA officials have said.

"Designed to advance high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, the mission would address key questions about the potential for life on Mars," NASA officials explain in a mission description. "The mission would also provide opportunities to gather knowledge and demonstrate technologies that address the challenges of future human expeditions to Mars."

Several key NASA Mars exploration officials will speak during today's Mars 2020 science briefing. They are:


The Mars 2020 rover is one of several NASA missions aimed at the Red Planet currently under development.

Later this year, NASA will launch the Mars Maven orbiter to study the Martian atmosphere in unprecedented detail. In 2016, the U.S. space agency will launch the Mars InSight lander to drill deep into the Martian surface.

The European Space Agency, meanwhile, is working with Russia on its ExoMars missions to launch an orbiter and rover to Mars in 2016 and 2018, respectively. India is also planning to launch its first Mars orbiter in the upcoming years.

Meanwhile, NASA's Curiosity rover and Opportunity rover are currently exploring the surface of Mars while spacecraft from NASA and the European Space Agency orbit the Red Planet.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-discuss-2020-mars-rover-launch-today-listen-143016648.html

That's in slightly less than three hours...

[Buster's Uncle]

Next Mars mission should search for past microbial life: science panel
Reuters
Irene Klotz 15 hours ago


CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's next mission to Mars should look for past microbial life and collect samples to eventually bring back to Earth, a science advisory group said on Tuesday.

The U.S. space agency expects to spend about $1.5 billion, plus launch costs, on a mission to follow the ongoing Mars rover Curiosity, which is scouting an ancient impact crater for habitats that could have supported microbial life.

The so-called Mars 2020 rover would take a more direct approach to learning if life exists beyond Earth, though it would search for past, not present-day, microbes.

"We don't have the clear indications that life is at such an abundance on the planet that we can go there with a simple experiment ... and detect that," said Brown University geologist John "Jack" Mustard, who chaired the Mars 2020 science advisory team.

NASA tried that approach in the 1970s with the Viking landers and found itself at a scientific dead end, but more recent discoveries about the planet's chemistry have cast those results in a new light.

The United States, which has been the only country to successfully land and operate on Mars, did not return to the planet's surface for more than 20 years.

Since then, an increasingly more sophisticated series of orbiters, landers and rovers have turned up evidence that the planet most like Earth in the solar system was once warmer and wetter than the cold, dry desert that exists today.

"To go and look for simple organisms, or not-so-simple organisms, that are living within that toxic, harsh environment, we just think is a foolish investment of the technology at this time," Mustard told reporters on a conference call.

"What you really want to get at is, ‘Was there ever life elsewhere? Was there a second genesis that had the same characteristics as what we had on Earth?' To go after those questions, you want to approach it in a logical, systematic, stepwise fashion so that you can be confident about your results as you move forward," Mustard said.

To that end, the advisory team proposes NASA include a way to collect and store about 31 tubes of crushed rock and soil to be returned to Earth in the future. The panel did not address cost and timing for that part of the endeavor.

The National Academy of Sciences last year ranked a Mars sample return mission as its top priority in planetary science for the next decade.

If the rover found "a dinosaur-type bone, we probably wouldn't need to have to return that sample. We could recognize that from our current capabilities," Mustard said.

"Our understanding is that (life on Mars) is likely to be microbial and that's a darn hard measurement to make and a darn hard measurement to convince the skeptical science community that it is indeed the case," he said.

Unlike Europe's planned ExoMars lander, a life-detection mission that is due to launch in 2018, NASA's rover would not drill deeply into the planet's surface for samples to analyze. Some scientists believe that any organic materials on or near the planet's surface would have been obliterated by the planet's harsh radioactive environment. The advisory panel, however, points out in its report that landing in a relatively recent crater could mitigate those concerns.

The United States had planned to partner with Europe on ExoMars, but backed out of the project last year, citing budget concerns. Since then, Russia has stepped in to fill the gap left by NASA's withdrawal.

NASA had no immediate comment about how the cost of the Mars 2020 mission compares with what it had expected to spend on ExoMars.

In addition to searching for past life, the new rover, which would launch in 2020, also could include tests that would help pave the way for eventual human missions to Mars, a long-term goal of space exploration initiatives.

NASA officials said they will be studying the team's report before issuing a solicitation for science instruments for the new rover.

http://news.yahoo.com/next-mars-mission-search-past-microbial-life-science-234929160.html