The March 2020 rover should be launched next July – Spaceflight Now



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In this image, taken on July 19 in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Spacecraft Assembly Facility's clean room in California, the rover's arm maneuvers a 2.1 meter sensor and a 40 kg sensor. Turret loaded as it moves from a deployed configuration to a docked configuration. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

NASA's March 2020 rover launch will take place in less than a year and the steady pace of work inside the California craft badembly hall keeps the mission on schedule to take off from Cape Canaveral next July, despite rising costs, according to mission officials. .

Based on the Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars, the March 2020 rover will weigh more than a ton when it will head for the Red Planet next year. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers will install the latest components inside the robot in the coming weeks. Once completed, the rover will go through a series of functional and environmental tests to make sure it's ready for Mars.

The plutonium-propelled rover is expected to take off from Cape Canaveral on July 17, 2020 at the top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. While teams are badembling the rover at JPL, the engineers are also finalizing work on the cruising stages. and descent from the mission, which will protect him during his flight from Earth and through the Martian atmosphere to land on February 21, 2021.

In addition to a ceremonial photo, scientists and engineers from March 2020 treated July 17 this year – a year before launch – as a normal day's work, baduming that one of the works involves the construction of a interplanetary robot.

"We are very close (to the finish of the rover)," said Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for the Mars 2020 mission at JPL. "I would say we're over 95%, maybe even 98. We only have a handful of things left."

"We are less than a year away from the launch and there are only a few months left from the start of equipment delivery in Cape Town," said Jim Watzin, director of NASA's exploration program on March, at the March 26 meeting of Mars Exploration. Program Analysis Group.

In June, workers inside the JPL spacecraft badembly facilities installed the Mars Rover's remote sensing mast March 2020, six wheels and robotic arm of a length of 2 meters ( 7 feet). JPL crews also added the rover 's scientific instruments, many of which are directly mounted on the remote sensing mast, which will rise to a height of more than 2.2 meters after landing on Mars or at sea. ;end. of the robot's arm.

The March 2020 rover engineering work was accelerated by JPL's experience in building the Curiosity rover.

But the new mobile includes different instruments to look for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, adding new capabilities to the toolbox designed for Curiosity. The March 2020 rover also features a novel set of internal mechanisms to collect, store and seal rock core samples for their return to Earth for a future mission, a new wheel design to avoid problems that were affecting Curiosity and a major upgrade known as Terrain Navigation. when landing, remove rocks, craters and other obstacles from the descent of the rover.

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The scientific instruments and the sample caching system proved to be the most difficult part of the development of the Mars 2020 mission, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

"All the instruments are on. They are all present, "Wallace said in a recent interview with Spaceflight Now.

One of the last major deliveries of instruments to the JPL clean room was SuperCam, a complex suite of sensors including a camera, a laser and spectrometers, designed to zap Martian rocks more than 6 meters apart in order to measure their chemical and mineral properties. makeup, with the ability to identify organic molecules.

Developed by an international team in the United States, France and Spain, the SuperCam instrument is an improved version of the ChemCam instrument currently running on NASA's Curiosity mobile, which arrived in March 2012.

The SuperCam is attached to the top of the rover Mars 2020's remote sensing mast, alongside the first zoom compatible camera capable of flying on the red planet. Martian weather sensors provided by Spain are also mounted on the mast.

"During the SuperCam, the French partners really had a good time and respected their schedule of the last six months. They worked night and day to get there, "said Wallace. "The last two instruments at the end of the arm – PIXL and SHERLOC – have been delivered in recent weeks and have thus completed the (scientific) surface instruments."

PIXL is the planetary instrument for X-ray lithochemistry. It will measure the chemical elements present in Martian rocks and soils. The SHERLOC instrument, a scanning environment with Raman and Luminescence properties for organic and chemical products, features an ultraviolet laser and a spectrometer to detect organic materials and minerals on the surface of Mars, as well as the a context camera.

SHERLOC survived a termination review earlier this year after teams encountered technical difficulties with the instrument, driving up its cost. The SHERLOC team solved a high voltage power problem and delivered the instrument for mobile integration earlier this month.

The engineers who badembled the rover at JPL installed the turret of the robot arm on July 11th. The turret is a set of 40 kilograms containing the PIXL and SHERLOC instruments, as well as cameras that the arm can place against the Martian rocks for scale measurements.

The turret also contains a hammer drill and a core drill to collect rock samples for eventual return to Earth.

The March 2020 team activated the robotic arm for a motion test on July 19th.

"It was our first opportunity to watch the arm and turret move together, making sure everything worked out as planned – nothing was blocking or hindering the smooth running of the system," said Dave Levine, Integration Engineer for March 2020. "Standing, watching the movements of the arm and turret, marvel that the rover will be in space in less than a year and will perform these exact motions on Mars in less than two . "

There are two other instruments on the March 2020 rover. The MOXIE payload will demonstrate oxygen production from carbon dioxide in the Mars atmosphere, and a ground-penetrating radar developed by Norway will study the structure. geological underground of the red planet.

"The past year or eighteen months before the system's integration is probably the most stressful and stressful part of a project, and it's no exception for March 2020," said Watzin. "They have many exciting payloads on this mobile, and without surprisingly, we discovered problems that needed to be solved, and we had to do iterations and repetitions."

Space enthusiasts will be able to watch a live video stream from the March 2020 Clean Room at JPL, showing the workers when they build the rover, which is approximately 3 meters long, 2.7 meters wide and 7 feet ( 7 meters). 2.2 meters) high.

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One of the last major elements to be added to the rover is a set of sophisticated instruments designed to sort, transfer and store rock samples for recovery by a future robotic Mars mission that will return specimens. on earth.

The Sample Caching System is a complex piece of equipment consisting of 17 motors, a rotating wheel containing nine drills and 43 tubes for hermetically sealing core samples taken from Martian rocks.

"The most important thing (still to install) is what we call the caching system," Wallace said. "There is a set of mechanisms right at the front of the vehicle. They are not visible from the outside, but when we take the sample using the drill located at the end of the robot's arm, we go back to the d & # 39; s something 39, a little called carousel located at the front of the vehicle and internal mechanisms. the badembly of caching and the tubes are inspected, sealed and stored inside ".

The part of the caching system inside the mobile calls the Adaptive Caching Assembly, consisting of over 3,000 pieces.

"There is a small robot arm inside, which is handling, and equipment that seals and inspects (tubes) and that sort of thing," Wallace said. "It's really the most substantial thing left."

The caching tubes themselves, each sterilized to extreme heat in an oven, will be installed on the Kennedy Space Center rover in Florida next year. The managers want to minimize the exposure of the tubes to contamination before launching in order to make sure the samples are immaculate when they return to Earth.

After collecting the core samples, the March 2020 rover will deposit some of the tubes in "depots" on Mars for a future mission, which will include a lander and rocket to bring the samples back into space and bring them back to Earth .

The JPL teams will also attach the Mars helicopter – the first vehicle built to fly through the atmosphere of another planet – to the belly of the March 2020 rover in the coming weeks.

"And the helicopter," added Wallace. "The helicopter will continue (soon). It is under the vehicle. That will be it.

"We are moving on all fronts – including the completion of the cruise stage that will guide us to Mars and the landing system for the descent of the sky crane that will take us back slowly to the surface, "said John McNamee, Project Manager Mars 2020 at JPL. "And the rover not only looks more and more like a rover every day, but so does it."

The engineers will then prepare for a series of tests in the fall, which will begin with a vibration test with the rover attached to its crane descent stage, the same type of landing vehicle that delivered the Curiosity rover. to Mars.

The rover will then be detached from its descent phase to undergo a thermal vacuum test, a verification of the vehicle's resistance to cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressure on Mars. A test of the electromagnetic properties of the rover is also planned, according to Wallace.

The March 2020 cruise phase is expected to be delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in December, followed by the transnational cargo flight of the rover and the descent between California and Florida in February.

Wallace said that the heat shield that will protect the rover while it sinks into the Martian atmosphere should be ready for transporting a Lockheed Martin facility in Colorado to KSC. Here the end of the year also.

Lockheed Martin has built a new heat shield for March 2020 after the initially mission-oriented structure – a spare part from the development of Curiosity – cracked during ground testing last year.

NASA said earlier this year that the March 2020 mission was to exceed the agency's previous budget commitment ($ 2.4 billion). Watzin said on July 26 that March 2020 had "sufficient reserves in terms of timing" to deliver the material to the launch site on time.

After stacking the rover, the descent phase and the cruising phase, the ground crews will hoist the entire spacecraft on a ULA Atlas 5 rocket and connect the rover's nuclear power source before the opening of the period. the main mission launch, which will last 20 days.

NASA has authorized the refueling of plutonium fuel 238 from the March 2020 nuclear power generator earlier this month.

Rover Artist Concept March 2020. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Launches directly from Earth to Mars are possible every 26 months, and launch opportunities next year start on July 17th.

Based on the latest trajectory badysis, the July 17 launch window will open at 1:00 pm GMT (9:00 am EDT), with windows of 1 to 2 hours per day available until August 5th. March 2020 will use the same variant of the Atlas 5 – with four powerful thrusters – launched the Curiosity rover in 2011.

NASA plans to oversee a naming competition that will begin this fall to give US elementary and high school students a chance to pick a name for the March 2020 rover.

The mission will target a landing in the Jezero crater, which is home to an ancient river delta and a lake that, according to scientists, filled the crater 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.

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