Hamartia Antidote
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 35,188
- Reaction score
- 30
- Country
- Location
Perseverance landing must-see TV Feb. 18
- Thread starter TruthSeeker
- Start date
Hamartia Antidote
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 35,188
- Reaction score
- 30
- Country
- Location
Last edited:
siegecrossbow
PDF THINK TANK: ANALYST
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2010
- Messages
- 7,414
- Reaction score
- 8
- Country
- Location
When are they launching the drone? I heard that the flight duration is a little under two minutes, which is impressive considering how thin the atmosphere is on Mars.
Last edited:
F-22Raptor
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2014
- Messages
- 16,980
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- Location
Hamartia Antidote
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 35,188
- Reaction score
- 30
- Country
- Location
Hamartia Antidote
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 35,188
- Reaction score
- 30
- Country
- Location
Funny thing is NASA can get better landing footage on the surface of Mars than we can get from a barge in the Atlantic.
truthfollower
BANNED
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2019
- Messages
- 1,841
- Reaction score
- -4
- Country
- Location
I saw it live. Go NASA Go America! 
truthfollower
BANNED
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2019
- Messages
- 1,841
- Reaction score
- -4
- Country
- Location
@TruthSeeker what is the down link speed from mars from this rover? is it in Kbps or Mbps?
dbc
PDF THINK TANK: ANALYST
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2009
- Messages
- 6,551
- Reaction score
- 14
- Country
- Location
4 mbps
TruthSeeker
PDF THINK TANK: ANALYST
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2008
- Messages
- 6,390
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- Location
Mar 4, 2021
RELEASE 21-026
NASA Awards Mars Ascent Propulsion System Contract for Sample Return
This illustration shows a concept of how the NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle, carrying tubes containing rock and soil samples, could be launched from the surface of Mars in one step of the Mars sample return mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA has awarded the Mars Ascent Propulsion System (MAPS) contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Elkton, Maryland, to provide propulsion support and products for spaceflight missions at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Coupled with the successful touchdown of the Mars Perseverance rover, this award moves NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) one step closer to realizing Mars Sample Return (MSR), a highly ambitious planetary exploration program that will build upon decades of science, knowledge, and experience of Mars exploration.
The cost-plus, fixed-fee contract has a potential mission services value of $60.2 million and a maximum potential value of $84.5 million. Work on MAPS begins immediately with a 14-month base period, followed by two option periods that may be exercised at NASA’s discretion.
In the next steps of the MSR campaign, NASA and ESA will provide components for a Sample Retrieval Lander mission and an Earth Return Orbiter mission. The Sample Retrieval Lander mission will deliver a Sample Fetch Rover and Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to the surface of Mars. Marshall is responsible for the MSR Program’s MAV element, which is a two-stage vehicle that will be a critical element in supporting MSR to retrieve and return the samples that the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will collect for return to Earth. The Martian environment will be a significant factor in the design, development, manufacturing, testing, and qualification of two different solid rocket motors with multiple deliveries of each. Through the MAPS contract, Northrop Grumman will provide the propulsion systems for the MAV, as well as other supporting equipment and logistics services.
Bringing Mars samples back to Earth will allow scientists across the world to examine the specimens using sophisticated instruments too large and too complex to send to Mars, and will allow future generations to study them using technology not yet available. Curating the samples on Earth will allow the science community to test new theories and models as they are developed, much as the Apollo samples returned from the Moon have done for decades.
For information about NASA and other agency programs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
RELEASE 21-026
NASA Awards Mars Ascent Propulsion System Contract for Sample Return
This illustration shows a concept of how the NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle, carrying tubes containing rock and soil samples, could be launched from the surface of Mars in one step of the Mars sample return mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA has awarded the Mars Ascent Propulsion System (MAPS) contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Elkton, Maryland, to provide propulsion support and products for spaceflight missions at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Coupled with the successful touchdown of the Mars Perseverance rover, this award moves NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) one step closer to realizing Mars Sample Return (MSR), a highly ambitious planetary exploration program that will build upon decades of science, knowledge, and experience of Mars exploration.
The cost-plus, fixed-fee contract has a potential mission services value of $60.2 million and a maximum potential value of $84.5 million. Work on MAPS begins immediately with a 14-month base period, followed by two option periods that may be exercised at NASA’s discretion.
In the next steps of the MSR campaign, NASA and ESA will provide components for a Sample Retrieval Lander mission and an Earth Return Orbiter mission. The Sample Retrieval Lander mission will deliver a Sample Fetch Rover and Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to the surface of Mars. Marshall is responsible for the MSR Program’s MAV element, which is a two-stage vehicle that will be a critical element in supporting MSR to retrieve and return the samples that the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will collect for return to Earth. The Martian environment will be a significant factor in the design, development, manufacturing, testing, and qualification of two different solid rocket motors with multiple deliveries of each. Through the MAPS contract, Northrop Grumman will provide the propulsion systems for the MAV, as well as other supporting equipment and logistics services.
Bringing Mars samples back to Earth will allow scientists across the world to examine the specimens using sophisticated instruments too large and too complex to send to Mars, and will allow future generations to study them using technology not yet available. Curating the samples on Earth will allow the science community to test new theories and models as they are developed, much as the Apollo samples returned from the Moon have done for decades.
For information about NASA and other agency programs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
Hamartia Antidote
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 35,188
- Reaction score
- 30
- Country
- Location
TruthSeeker
PDF THINK TANK: ANALYST
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2008
- Messages
- 6,390
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- Location
NASA's Perseverance rover takes its first test drive on Mars
By Chelsea Gohd 4 hours ago
Percy is on the move!
NASA's Perseverance rover has taken its first test drive on Mars, the agency announced Friday (March 5).
Perseverance, a car-sized rover that landed successfully on the Red Planet Feb. 18, just made its first short drive on Thursday, NASA officials said. The rover moved a total of 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across the Martian terrain on a drive that took about 33 minutes, during which Perseverance moved forward, turned in place and backed up. The rover drives with a top speed of .01 miles per hour (.016 kilometers).
"Our first drive went incredibly well," NASA's Anais Zarifian, a Perseverance mobility test bed engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Zarifian added that the rover "works beautifully, we were so excited."
"This is really just the beginning," Zarifian said.
During the briefing, mission team members also announced that they are naming Perseverance's landing site in Jezero Crater "Octavia E. Butler Landing" after the famed science fiction author; the first science fiction author to receive the MacArthur Fellowship.
Image 1 of 2
Perseverance took its first steps on Mars, NASA revealed March 5, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Perseverance rover captured this image of its own footprints on Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Perseverance took its first steps on Mars, NASA revealed March 5, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Perseverance rover captured this image of its own footprints on Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
While Perseverance has the same body design as NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, improvements to its mobility system mean that it can drive for much longer in the same amount of time. While the two rovers have the same top speed, Perseverance's new cameras and improved navigation software allow it to think about where it's going while in motion.
So, while Curiosity had to essentially stop to think, Perseverance can "walk and chew gum at the same time," Zarifian said. This allows the rover to cover more ground more quickly, despite having the same "speed."
NASA's Perseverance rover's right navigation camera (Navcam) captured this image of the rover's Martian footprints on March 5, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
To prepare for this first drive, mission team members had the rover turn its wheels in place, making sure they were displaying their full range of motion and were ready for the short trip. NASA shared a short video clip on the rover's Twitter feed of one of the rover's wheels turning in the Martian surface as part of this preparation.
"A quick test of my steering, and things are looking good as I get ready to roll. My team and I are keen to get moving. One step at a time," Perseverance team members wrote on Twitter.
"So striking to see rover tracks that begin from nothing. @NASAPersevere is on the move!" Perseverance rover operator and Earth & planetary science Ph.D. candidate Erin Gibbons said on Twitter alongside a photo of the tracks the rover made on the Martian surface.
This first drive comes as Perseverance checks a handful of other Martian "firsts" off its list, which all seem to be going very well.
"Perseverance has been doing an exceptional job in her first two weeks on the red planet," Robert Hogg, the rover's deputy mission manager at JPL, said during the news briefing today.
Among these milestones are the rover's first arm stretch — an important first step to getting its robotic arm, a critical asset for sampling and scientific observation, moving — and the deployment of wind sensors — instruments that are part of the rover's weather station, which will monitor air temperature, humidity, radiation, dust and wind.
Rover controllers also recently checked in with the craft's RIMFAX (Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment) and MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) instruments. The rover has also continued to send back images of its new, Martian environment back to Earth.
Click here for more Space.com videos...
"We are seeing all kinds of textures and rocks that are around Perseverance's landing site," Perseverance deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan of JPL told Space.com during the briefing when asked about what mission scientists are already gleaning the rover's images.
"But we are only just getting our instruments checked out, so these other instruments are really important for us to put together a model for how these rocks form and what their significance might be ... we landed in a very interesting area where we are trying to figure out the origin of these rocks," Morgan added.
Perseverance is the crown jewel of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, and will spend its time on the Red Planet searching for concrete signs of ancient life, along with collecting scientific data to do things like study the planet's complex climate; the rover will also be completing technology experiments like with Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter
Similar threads
