NASA unveils new Mars rover mission

Mars, the red planet, as seen from space. / NASA

In an ongoing effort to restructure its Mars exploration program in the wake of deep budget cuts announced earlier this year, NASA announced plans Tuesday to build and launch a new rover to the red planet in 2020 based on the design of the agency's hugely successful Curiosity.

The as-yet-unnamed rover is the second new Mars mission announced in the wake of the budget cuts that will be built using already-existing designs, a money-saving architecture agency officials say is more in line with current funding reality.

"The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation," John Grunsfeld, NASA's science chief, said in a statement.

He was referring to Curiosity's innovative rocket-powered "sky crane" descent system that successfully lowered the nuclear-powered rover to the surface of Mars Aug. 6 after a nail-biting seven-minute plunge from space.

"This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity," Grunsfeld said after announcing the new mission at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

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Mars rover Curiosity: Images from the Red Planet

In August, just two weeks after Curiosity's touchdown, NASA announced that it would launch a relatively low-cost Mars lander in 2016 that will make a rocket-powered descent to the surface to study whether the red planet's core is solid or liquid and whether the planet has tectonic plates that slowly move like Earth's continents.

Called InSight, for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, the new spacecraft will be based on the design of NASA's successful Phoenix probe, a traditional solar-powered legged lander that touched down near the north polar cap of of the red planet in May 2008.

InSight will be equipped with a robotic arm, along with two black-and-white cameras and a geodetic instrument provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to measure the planet's rotation axis. As a so-called Discovery-class mission, the cost is capped at $425 million, excluding the price of the launcher.

The new rover announced Tuesday will be based on Curiosity's design to "ensure mission costs and risks are as low as possible," NASA said in a statement, "while still delivering a highly capable rover with a proven landing system."

"The mission will constitute a vital component of a broad portfolio of Mars exploration missions in development for the coming decade," NASA said.

The Obama administration's fiscal 2013 budget request called for a 20 percent reduction in NASA's planetary exploration budget with most of the cutbacks coming from the Mars program. Additional reductions are expected in later years.

As a result, NASA pulled out of two planned Mars missions that would have been conducted jointly with the European Space Agency in 2016 and 2018. At that time, no other "flagship" missions like Curiosity's were in development.

Amid vocal criticism from some quarters, NASA announced plans to restructure the program.

Along with its operational spacecraft and instruments -- the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, two operational Mars orbiters and components aboard an ESA orbiter -- the agency's revised Mars program now includes:

[jonathanscottjames]

when i was 11, i discovered a invented to make 1nm vermiculite. at the time it was just a novelty. i was melting glass tubes with a candle.i could heat a glass tube with a candle till it melted then seal the end and then blow air with mu mouth in the cold end of the tube. i could bvlow a bubblew with walls so thinn that you could see the colors from the light defraction. you could literally blow it till it popped sending sparcles of micro flakes of vermiculite(micro thin glass flakes) all over the place. i didn't do it too much cause the flakes are so thin that they are an aerosol and take a while to settle out of the air.
but i guess if you use a ceramic airiator like a fish aquarium airator to blow air into a vat of molten glass, it would produce micro vermiculite like crazy for nothing

[jonathanscottjames]

this is what excites me
earth's speed around the sun mph 71676.765995660352235059169137109
mercury's speed around the sun 107099.74955419749676577193352089
difference 35422.983558537144530712764383792

[jonathanscottjames]

reinforced with some nano vermiculite proscess that would bind the vermiculite to the microfiber with an adheasive vaccuum deposited alloy coating that hasn't been developed. its not hard to imagine a low temperature metalic glazing class material that can withstand high intencity uv that would be used to flock on vermiculite so the space sail craft would be capable of reflecting the suns 100 nanomeeter wavelength radiation but its hard to imagine a secure facillity to develop it in that would be safe from industrial sabatours

[jonathansj]

the sail should actually be made of microfiber fiberglass vaccuum deposited with aluminium. or rodium .. should have aluminium and rodium cathodewith aluminium cathode filiments on board to recoat it with any metal at any time.
maybe that could be a redundant way to control it. or a primary way to control it. just change it from absorption to reflection or back.
it could also cone on a radial axis to the sun or cone on a orbital tanget axis for repelling to the mesosphere for one man parachute landing. the center of the sheet at the hub would be made of clear marterial

but micro fiber quartz fiberglass filiments woven into a sheet would be less than 1/4 the weight strength. maybe woven with copper for thermal dispursion.
sounds like a new kind of solar cell. i wonder if it would be photo voltaic?

[silvereagle2718]

Mercury is challenging because it is hot. Closer to the sun means more sunlight. It also means more harmful radiation. Cooling requires more complicated machinery than heating.

Multiplying the incident sunlight by a large number does not mean a solar panel will operate under those conditions. At high temperatures computers may not work, some metals may melt, etc... It doesn't mean the domain cannot be explored--it merely means the problem is more difficult and the required technologies are likely to be less developed.

Space exploration remains an expensive, complicated, open-ended, and probably unprofitable problem. One of the things that gets useful things done is the question, "What can I do with the money I have (or might be able to get)?"

At a billion dollars a shot for a 100 ton rocket, the best thing somebody can do for you is (accurately) tell you why your idea won't work and not give you the job. Getting the job puts you in the spotlight and gives you an opportunity to do well or poorly, when it may not be technically or fiscally possible to do well.

I'm inclined to focus on development of a few selected technologies without necessarily landing anywhere. Mars is on the radar, but not really a target, at least for me.

Energy and medicine are worldwide problems and space exploration is a likely only a topic of interest, at least in the developed world. People that heal the sick and feed the hungry may have less to answer for.

[jonathansj]

it wouldn't work for mars because there are asteroid belts between mars and earth tyhat would tare it or any space craft to ribbins

[jonathansj]

whole thing could theoretically be developed and launched on a single pegasis for 25000 initial 1 unit cost. 1000 units would be less t han 5000$ each after launch

[jonathansj]

now i'm thinking about a 10' diameter gyroscopic spoked wheel that would connect to the sail with a shaded pole-motor-magnetic-repulsion-bareing and the main gyro would have a much much smaller gyroscopic wheel on its rim. the small gyroscope would make the large er gyro disk precess to controle the direction of reflection.
to make it hover, the sail would spin tilted on the mmain gyroscope axis at a slow speed less than 1 rpm.
to return to earth. the solar sail craft would be parked or hover just ourtside the atmosphere. you would jump off into an ionouspheric turbulance wave and deploy a parachute.. or you could lower yourself into the ionousphere on a fiberglass rope then let go and freefall threw the ionousphere.. you might use a fiberglass heatshield like es on space capsules and you could air surf all the way to the ground and land at 60mph maybe 45mph. i havn't ever tested aerodynamics at that speed

[jonathansj]

now that the space shuttle program has come to a close i can talk about this new program that i dreamed up decqades ago for the moon.

i think mars mission is a bad idea. because more than 10% of the space craft sent to mars have been destroyed.
i suspect they were destroyed by asteroids falling in and out of the asteroid belt in which Mars's orbit is located.

instead, mercury is the best choice. its a sure thing. there are no obstructions. mercury nor Venus has a moon.
and solar power in massively abundant.

one single 300watt earth based solar panel would produce over 4000 watts if it were implemented on mercury

it would be easy to make and send a solar powered bull dozer to mercury.

the bull dozer would first create a crater on or near mercury's north pole

the walls of the man made crater would shield the sun off and solar panels placed on steel poles would be hit by 16 times the sun of the earth 24-7 with no atmosphere they would receive 100% sunlight 24hours a day 7 days a week

comparatively small solar panels could run air conditioners . coupled with thermos effect of mercury's almost total vacuum atmosphere would make it livable with low maintenance and million of watts of electric power for comfortable living

then the bull dozer would make cement from the calcium and silica of mercury's soil with the heat from the sun.
the cement would be used to build an inter cosmic embassy with a four star hotel

the sun would also be used to power turbine pumps over 1000 feet in diameter that would compress mercury's ultra thin atmosphere into containers then convert the hydrogen/oxygen atmosphere into drinking watter

delta rockets would be used to send the bull dozer(s)
people would be shuttled by reliable Apollo Saturn 5 rockets.

it may even be possible to use my concept of a solar sail craft for individuals to fly to and from mercury

the sail craft consists of a 1 mile in diameter sheet of aluminum foil

i have tested the scale prototype and it seems to have many times the power needed to ascend and descend the 69nmillion miles to mercury building up speed to 38,000mph on decent then returning to earth by ascending and dropping speed decelerating 38000mph back to earths orbital velocity

i now remember decades ago telling the sunday morning open topic call in talk show of this dream, talking on local kzew fm in Dallas before the inception of the space shuttle when my friend Dr Von Braun was alive.

years later my friend paleontologist Dr Carl Sagan joined the discussion and i asked him exactly what solar wind is made of and to him of a test i did that proved to me that the force that drives "electrometers" can power am interplanetary solar sail craft for a micro fraction of the cost of rocketry.