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Its going to need to go fast to make it up and then put on the breaks hard once near mars....
Dubbed “Perseverance,” the SUV-sized rover would embark on a $2.7 billion exploration mission to search for ancient signs of life on Mars, and begin the first leg of an attempt to bring samples from the Red Planet back to Earth.
ouch that's a very expensive rover mission....
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Closing in on the launch day https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasas-n … r-covid-19
https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/nasa … re-launch/
With such an important timescale to keep to, NASA has to allow for the possibility that there could be poor weather on the launch day requiring a short delay. So the window for the launch this summer runs from July 20 to August 11, allowing some flexibility for last-minute issues. The rover will be launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, along with the first-ever helicopter to be flown on another planet, named Ingenuity.
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Perseverance rover bringing 3D-printed metal parts to Mars
Of the 11 printed parts going to Mars, five are in Perseverance's PIXL instrument.
Video NASA's Perseverance Rover Bringing 3D-Printed Metal Parts to Mars
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Perseverance's six other 3D-printed parts can be found in an instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE. This device will test technology that, in the future, could produce industrial quantities of oxygen to create rocket propellant on Mars, helping astronauts launch back to Earth.
To create oxygen, MOXIE heats Martian air up to nearly 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius). Within the device are six heat exchangers - palm-size nickel-alloy plates that protect key parts of the instrument from the effects of high temperatures.
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Sunrise as seen by Curiosity
Counting down as Nasa Rover has less than 100 Days until reaching the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021; in Jezero Crater, just north of the planet's equator.
With that landing Mars Is Getting a New Robotic Meteorologist
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has two wind sensors just below its mast, or "head." They're part of MEDA, (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) a weather science package that will provide vital data on the Martian surface, especially dust in the atmosphere.
Models of the temperature at Perseverance's landing site range from an average of minus 126 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 88 degrees Celsius) at night to about minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) in the afternoon.
MEDA and its predecessors is that it will also measure the amount, shape, and size of dust particles in the Martian atmosphere. Dust is a big consideration for any surface mission on Mars.
MEDA's data will help another instrument on Perseverance: the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). MOXIE will demonstrate a technology that future explorers might use to produce oxygen that can be used for rocket propellant and for breathing. For devices like MOXIE to succeed, mission planners will need more information on what they're up against. "Are they getting a clean atmosphere?" said de la Torre Juarez. "Are they getting a dusty atmosphere? Is this dust going to end up essentially filling up the air filters or not? They may identify times of the day when it is better to run MOXIE, versus times when it is better not to run it."
To take its measurements, MEDA will wake itself up each hour, day and night, whether Perseverance is roving or napping. That will create a nearly constant stream of information to help fill the gaps in our knowledge about the Martian atmosphere.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecra … ents/meda/
All of this is to pave the way Preparing for a human mission to Mars
https://dx.doi.org/10.1089/ast.2020.2373
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Yes, interesting read, 100 days and 4 billion, but the usual.
They did that with the 1 billion 1970's probes, and could have easily botched the oven tests, (dropped the dirt before adding moisture and heating up).
They willl never bring back samples from Mars as independant researchers may get a hold of some, and find it has organics or microbes in them, as Viking showed in its first two oven tests.
They spend more and more with fancier tools, but it all boils down to the same thing, a smokescreen of low pixel Mast Cam images, intentionally avioding anything that should be inspected up close, and intentionally repeating images from earlier Sols, (l have noticed that at times) to hide the current rovers treck over some water or overcast skys.
And we get NASA officials saying how exited they are, l will be exited when they tell us what is really there.
/:
Last edited by Tmcom (2020-11-16 08:16:09)
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https://photographylife.com/landscapes/ … hotography
is the colored little dots in the sun facing image
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https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020
The home page shows several stages to the rover landing
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/files/me … on_3_1.mp4
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/files/me … tion_1.mp4
90 days to mars touchdown
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All eyes will be soon on the Perseverance rovers landing..for FEB 18, 2021 now under 70 days .. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
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This post is from a lack of information coming from the insight lander as to why its data is not being received....
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecra … nications/
Antennas on rover deck:
Ultra-High Frequency Antenna
X-band High-Gain Antenna
X-band Low-Gain AntennaMars 2020 uses its ultra-high frequency (UHF) antenna (about 400 megahertz) to communicate with Earth through NASA's orbiters around Mars. Because the rover and orbiter antennas are within close range of each other, they act a little like walky-talkies compared to the long-range telecommunications with Earth provided by the low-gain and high-gain antennas.
It generally takes about 5 to 20 minutes for a radio signal to travel the distance between Mars and Earth, depending on planet positions. Using orbiters to relay messages is beneficial because they are much closer to Perseverance than the Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas on Earth. The mass- and power-constrained rover can achieve high data rates of up to 2 megabits per second on the relatively short-distance relay link to the orbiters overhead. The orbiters then use their much larger antennas and transmitters to relay that data on the long-distance link back to Earth.The high-gain antenna X band (7 to 8 gigahertz)is steerable so it can point its radio beam in a specific direction. The benefit of having a steerable antenna is that the entire rover doesn't need to change position to talk to Earth, which is always moving in the Martian sky. Deep Space Network's 230-foot-diameter (70 meter-diameter)
Provided by Spainlow-gain antenna primarily for receiving signals. This antenna can send and receive information in every direction; that is, it is "omni-directional." The antenna transmits at low data rate to the Deep Space Network antennas on Earth.
Seems these are the same systems for communications for this rover as for the others, so I am wonder if its resetting or out of funds to continue the satellites in orbit or something else?
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The search for life continues NASA's Perseverance rover will look for biosignatures on Mars and its landing site looks remarkably similar to Earth-based sites that contain ancient fossilized cells.
On 18 February, the Mars2020 mission will touch down in a small crater called Jezero near the Martian equator. The mission includes a rover called Perseverance that will explore the area, analyze rocks and gather samples to be returned to Earth by a later mission due to fly in 2026. The mission also includes a helicopter drone called Ingenuity that will scout ahead, looking for intriguing targets to study.
Jezero is interesting because it was once filled with liquid water and so should contain significant evidence of its effects. Even more tantalizing is the possibility that the crater once hosted life. Indeed, part of the Mars2020 mission is to search for signs of life and any biosignatures preserved in the rock.
Planetary geologists have long studied Jezero, marking it as a potential landing site for Mars missions. But the decision to send a rover there has made it the target of much more study.
The crater is about 50 kilometers in diameter and well-studied using the cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The images at various frequencies of visible and infrared light reveal the composition of the rock and also its grain size, which reveals how it has weathered over time.
Brown says this shows the crater was originally formed in rock consisting of olivine, a mineral containing iron, magnesium and silicates, as well as well carbonates.
Brown says NASA and the European Space Agency have agreed to work on the sample return mission together. “The nominal launch date is planned for 2026, with a nominal return of samples by 2031,” he says.
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Counting down to Feb. 18, 2021, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover makes its final descent to the Red Planet
During landing, the rover plunges through the thin Martian atmosphere, with the heat shield first, at a speed of over 12,000 mph (about 20,000 kph).
A parachute and powered descent slow the rover down to about 2 mph (three-fourths of a meter per second).
This is where the belly flop is to take place for the Starship landing glide...
A large sky crane then lowers the rover on three bridle cords to land softly on six wheels. Landing on Mars is hard.
Starship would then do the verticle landing...
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Purdue scientist ready for Mars rover touchdown, Perseverance is expected to touch down on Mars around Feb. 18.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
The rover will land in Jezero Crater, just north of the planet's equator. The crater used to contain a lake and large river delta. Horgan led mineralogy research for the mission and her team's important finding on the location contributed to the selection of Jezero Crater.
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This is an excerpt from the article linked by SpaceNut, about spinoffs of NASA research ...
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 01#p176501
Home Videos from Mars
Collecting samples for return to Earth isn't the only first that engineers have planned for Perseverance. For the first time, NASA has built a system that could send back high-quality video of a rover's dramatic entry and landing sequence.While the Curiosity rover sent back a series of compressed images showing the Martian surface during descent, Perseverance's entry, descent, and landing package includes six high-definition cameras and a microphone that aims to capture all the drama of the "seven minutes of terror" between hitting the outer atmosphere and touching down. In addition to watching the planet's surface, the cameras are positioned to watch the parachutes unfold and also to look back at the descent stage and down at the rover as the two separate.
Video of the flight through the atmosphere of Mars may have been reported before in the forum, but since the actual landing is so close at hand, I thought it would be good time to mention it.
In the Ballistic Cargo Delivery topic, one recommendation is to slow payloads as much as possible using atmosphere as a slowing agent. If video is made available from the perseverance landing attempt, it should be instructive for Cargo mission planners.
(th)
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I thought I had a helicopter for Mars topic but its evading me...
Meet Ingenuity, the first helicopter to attempt powered flight on another planet
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ESA Mars orbiters support NASA Perseverance landing
NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is due to land on the Red Planet at 21:43 CET on 18 February 2021.
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Counting down
As new probes reach Mars, here's what we know so far from trips to the Red Planet
We will be making tracks like these
The first, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Probe, made it to the Red Planet last week. It will stay in orbit and study its atmosphere for one complete Martian year (687 Earth days).
China’s Tianwen-1 mission also entered orbit this month and will begin scouting the potential landing site for its Mars rover, due to be deployed in May.
If successful, China will become the second country to land a rover on Mars.
These two missions joined six orbiting spacecraft actively studying the Red Planet from above:
NASA's Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN Orbiter
Europe's Mars Express
India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)
the European and Russian partnership ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
By the numbers: NASA's Perseverance rover
Length: 10 feet (17 feet with drill-arm extended)
Width: 9 feet
Height: 7 feet
Weight: 2,260 pounds
Top speed: 0.1 mph
Power source: U.S. government-provided nuclear decay "battery"
Distance traveled to Mars: 293 million miles over six months
Equipment: Cameras, radar sensors, "arm" with a drill, scientific analy
After a 293 million-mile trek across the expanse since its July 2020 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the upgraded rover is slated to land on the red planet at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Thursday.
Its target: Jezero Crater, a harsh surface feature that was likely once a deep lake fed by rivers of running water.
Timeline: Seven minutes of Terror (All times Eastern on Feb. 18)
3:38 p.m.: Cruise stage separation
3:48 p.m.: Seven minutes of terror begin with atmospheric entry
3:49 p.m.: Moment of peak heating (2,400 degrees)
3:52 p.m.: 70-foot parachute deployment
3:52 p.m.: Heat shield separation (20 seconds after parachute)
3:54 p.m.: Perseverance separates from protective back shell and parachute
3:55 p.m.: Perseverance touchdown in Jezero CraterThis seven-minute process – from 3:48 p.m. to 3:55 p.m. Eastern – is known as the “seven minutes of terror.” Because signals take 11 minutes to reach Earth, human input in the event of a mishap is impossible – Perseverance is on her own.
As it approaches Mars’ thin atmosphere, the heat shield affixed to the front of Curiosity’s protective capsule will bear the brunt of fiery entry while also acting as an airbrake of sorts. A massive 70-foot parachute then automatically deploys, further slowing down the 2,200-pound rover.
About 65 feet from the surface, the still-firing retrorockets slow Perseverance’s approach to 1.7 mph. The descent stage then kicks off the “Sky Crane Maneuver,” which uses strong nylon cords to slowly lower the rover down to the ground. After confirmation of touchdown, the sky crane severs the cords and flies off to put distance between it and the rover.
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The purpose of the "Skycrane maneuver" design approach is to delete having a rover atop a dedicated lander. You get to make the lander be the rover, and you get to delete the touchdown rockets from the rover that way. The cost is the mass of the winches and cables that lower the rover, plus the hover propellant while it is lowered. This is necessary to stay under about 100 kg/sq.m worth of ballistic coefficient, with an aeroshell hypersonic drag coefficient of 1.7-ish on blockage area. Otherwise, at higher ballistic coefficient, you simply have insufficient time for your ringsail chute to do any good. You smack the ground still quite high supersonic.
Another equally-Rube Goldberg way to accomplish this landing would be to add the touchdown rockets-and-tankage directly to the corners of the rover, and just shed them onto the ground after landing. This might actually be the lighter solution, but it is NOT the more compact solution, and so might have required a substantially-larger payload shroud (and launch rocket) to take off from Earth.
The other downside is the rover proximity to propellant residuals left over after touchdown. Those would be quite close in my scheme, much farther away in the "Skycrane" scheme. They are an explosion hazard. If you cannot move promptly after touchdown, those residuals could present quite a risk.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-02-16 10:54:50)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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I guess we ought to mark the moment guys!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech … TODAY.html
Even if we know this is a bit of a sideshow and we might be appalled by that NASA-brand picture quality!
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