[ad_1]
A Mars return mission samples are not very useful if they do not actually return, that is why ESA is working on a new mobile robot for recover Martian and ground rock containers left by NASA's Mars 2020 rover. ESA has just awarded the initial contract of £ 3.9 million ($ 5.2 million) to design the new Fetch Rover at Airbus, which will undertake the study at Stevenage, England.
A very high thing on the list of scientists get their hands on a sample of Martian soil. Unfortunately, it is one of those things that is easier said than done. Just getting to Mars is still one of the most challenging space missions, but collecting samples and returning them to Earth is a quantum leap of complexity.
It's actually three separate missions that depend on one of the other. The first will be the NASA Mars 2020 robot, which is due to take off in July 2020 on an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral. This unmanned nuclear explorer will travel the Martian landscape like the Curiosity rover on which it is based. The difference is that when Curiosity does all its badysis using its embedded labs, March 2020 will collect samples and drop them inside 36 metal containers the size of a pen.
The second mission, ESA's Fetch, is launched in 2026 tasked with tracing the path of Mars 2020 and collecting these sample containers, which will be placed in a "box of delights". Fetch will then return to its lander, to which is attached a cylinder containing a Mars climbing vehicle. Once the box is installed in the rocket, the rocket takes off in orbit around Mars.
If all goes well, a third mission, ESA's Earth Return Orbiter, will be on hand to collect the samples and seal them in a shielded and biologically isolated container to protect it during the journey to Earth. The purpose of the container is to ensure that the samples not only survive, but that the samples will not be contaminated by the microbes of the Earth or by the Earth by the microbes that it might contain. The samples will land somewhere in the US by 2030 before being distributed to laboratories around the world.
"This remarkable new project, which will see samples brought back from Mars to Earth for the first time, exemplifies Britain's cutting-edge scientific and technological innovation," said the British Minister of Science, Sam Gyimah. The awarding of this contract builds on the UK's expertise in the field of space and robotics that the government supports through the Space Agency. and major investments in our modern industrial strategy
by Airbus to Stevenage and the refined knowledge and expertise will now be applied to the design of this new mission, which aims to provide for the first time in safely material from another planet. »
missions
Source: British Space Agency, Airbus
See the gallery – 4 images
[ad_2]
Source link
