NASA Reveals Latest Mars Plans Today
NASA Hosts Teleconference on Status of Mars Program Options
“NASA will host a media teleconference 3 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 25, to provide details of a summary report provided by the Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG). The MPPG was established to aid with planning for the agency’s future Mars Program within available future budgets. The summary report will be posted an hour before the teleconference on NASA’s MPPG webpage.”
NAS Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (dial-in/webcast)
“10:15 a.m. PDT (1:15 pm EDT) Report of the Mars Program Planning Group – Orlando Figueroa”
Mars Program Planning Group Summary of Final Report
Another Robotic Mission:
I hope its a return mission in which a lander collects samples and returns them back to earth. That would be so cool! I would like to see the architectural design on such a mission.
How wonderful will it be in the press briefing that they announce they will contract SpaceX to build Dragon Mars to bring back samples!
http://i.space.com/images/i…
I sure wish they would use a dragon platform. So has to set the stage for spacex developing dragon into a human mars lander.
Get us there cheapest and fastest!
I really like the way NASA does teleconference now.They webcast the graphics.When somebody is talking about them up pops the graphic.No need to see the people,just the graphics.Started with JPL.NASA does not mention this however.They just say go to a website to see the graphics.I wonder if all centers do this.When I use to listen,audio only,the patterns that WMP played was cool however.
I confess that the marginal value of a return mission escapes me. I think more particularly I’d like to know exactly what tests or assessments would be run that are not currently handled by Curiosity.
Perhaps a sample return makes sense when something truly inexplicable is found by a rover, or perhaps as a technology precursor for human flight.
Smarter people here will disabuse me of my naive assessment, I hope.
The instruments on a rover are almost laughably crude when compared with what you can do in a proper lab on Earth.
There are hundreds of types of inspection and characterization tools, each of them waaaay too large to fit on a rover, and requiring a lot of electricity and usually a human operator.
Plus there’s the ability to prepare samples, which is probably 75% of the art of getting a good measurement.
Sample return would be huge.
That said, people with a portable lab on Mars would be huger.
They could chop open the rock little by little and maybe discover a fossil 🙂 Send a bunch of rocks and would be far easier to find fossils with the rocks here if they exist. Probably would start out more carefully than what I say since they would be so valuable.
OK, I get that point. But how many rocks that one picks up have fossils here on earth where life is like graffiti? What are the chances that a ‘hot’ rock would be in the bunch?
I still seriously doubt the efficacy of the thing. Perhaps a rover with a big ole hammer and a better pair of eyes and hands would be better…and cheaper? Who knows. Not me.
Yep, nobody knows. Was there life? How abundant was it? How long ago? How much rock churning has happened in the meantime?
Nice. Another robot sniffing around on a dead rock. And then…something that looks like water…scientists almost jump in joy and tell the remote-pilot to stick some million-dollar instrument in it…then some guy from the back of the control room yells: “Don’t! The instrument could be contaminated with Earth-bacteria! During all those checks we forgot to disinsect it! Let’s leave this scientific discovery that interests about 50 people worldwide to the next billion-dollar Mars robot to be launched sometime in the 2040s.”
This is not the way to get the public to support expensive space exploration. Why is SpaceX so much more interesting to the general public than NASA although SpaceX does things NASA did decades ago? Think about it.
I would agree with you only if they dont return any artifacts. Curiosity pretty much will accomplish all the sniffing and poking around that scientific want. Any more missions that duplicate Curiosity is just a waste of money.
Yeah, so sample return. We need a rock collector rover, then a lander/return mission to follow. The collector could be like a “dumb” Curiosity – no real science instruments, but a scoop or something to carry and deliver rocks. That must be cheaper than a Curiosity, right?
50 people worldwide interested in life on Mars? Nice trolling.
I think he meant “50% of”. He was criticising NASA over the story recently that MSL can’t touch water due to possible contamination issues. Ie, that the thing that would have the widest public interest is the thing NASA seems to have left out of MSL’s capabilities. Or any lander/rover since Viking.[I stand corrected.]
To further clarify:
1. I wanted to express my frustration, that a TRUE discovery on Mars (direct contact with and analysis of water on Mars) was not possible because of a few bugs on an instrument that may even not be there.
2. Furthermore I was criticizing that every generation of Mars rovers seem to do the same thing – only scaled up (sniffing at rocks and making pictures). Where is the progress in results and capabilities here?
Could it be they/spacex have a goal if not a plan and they move quickly so as not to get boring?
I have looked at the past history of landers on Mars and the only thing that has not been done is a plane flying around and I found this the Mars Glider or ARES! I believe thats whats going to be presented.
http://marsairplane.larc.na…
http://marsairplane.larc.na…
While at Lockheed I worked on a proposal for the Mars Airplane Package (MAP).
It would have entered Mars atmosphere in a heatshield like the MER rovers. While under parachute, the plane woudl have descended on a tether like Curiosity and then deployed folding wings. Then it would have separated and fired a solid rocket motor and flown for nearly 30 minutes uplinking data to an orbiter. If the proposal would have been accepted, it would have flown on Mars on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Flyer!
Too bad…. It would have been amazing to go from flying on Earth to flying on another planet in only 100 years.
Stuart,
That would have been just plane cool.
Steve
Sample returns from Phobos and Deimos would be much cheaper and more practical since they could help to dramatically reduce the cost of manned missions to Mars– if significant amounts of water ice is contained in the regolith of these two natural satellites. Water from the moons of Mars might also be a viable commercial export to resupply water depots located within cis-lunar space for mass shielding, drinking, air, and fuel.
Marcel F. Williams
Marcel,
That would be nice if they found water on Mar’s moons, but given their small size and and their closeness to the planet I would suspect that any water/ice that they did have was outgassed a long time ago. Of course, at some point we need to find out the situation for certain.
If it turns out that Mars has water/ice/permafrost but its moons don’t, it might make sense down the road to process the stuff and store it in depots on the moons for easy, low energy access by passing missions/spacecraft.
Steve
The oxygen alone (~86% of rocket fuel/89% of water) contained in the regolith of Phobos and Deimos would be extremely valuable all by itself. But I’d be really surprised if ice particles weren’t a significant component (at least 5% or more) of the regolith of both moons since temperatures on their surface never climb above the freezing point of water.
But NASA needs to know these things if they are really serious about sending humans to Mars as economically as possible.
Marcel F. Williams
NASA’s plan for Mars is to keep orbiting using universal laws just where it is now while we start to design the next generation rockets and cancel those designs every four to eight years in favor of the next administrations pet plan and name.
I don’t suppose anyone else noticed that human spaceflight was hardly included in the results of this study (at least judging from their summary slides). The Terms of Reference were very clearly for the group (which included both SMD and HEOMD people) to consider top level science and exploration (that’s human space flight) requirements. But what we’re looking at here is a plan where humans might be used to meet up with samples lofted off of Mars, box them up, and escort them home. The human role here is just one of planetary protection!
Now, in all fairness, the TOR was just looking ahead to the 2030s, but that’s still a long ways off. One would have liked to believe that we’d at least have astronauts in orbit around Mars doing science telerobotically by then. But that’s not what this report is telling us to look forward to.
Sounds like only Elon is planning to go to Mars
So, why didn’t they talk about terraforming? Why not introduce organisms, bacterias, or plant life to see what happens. Find creatures that can live in the harshest environments on earth and send them to Mars. Just an idea! Who knows, maybe something can live underground and multiply and thrive.
I don’t like the idea of terraforming mars. As I understand it when the sun has solar events it blows the atmosphere off Mars. terraforming would only be a good idea if you could make magnetic field to protect it. Keep the ice safe under ground and use it wisely. No let it get blown away.