Stealing Rocks – The Mars Return Mission Samples



[ad_1]

The main goal of the Mars 2020 mission is to land on the planet the next generation Martian rover. Measuring 10 feet long (3 meters), 9 feet wide (2.7 meters), and 7 feet tall (2.2 meters), the rover is the size of a small car, a little larger than the vehicles currently on the site. And it will also be used for a new type of mission.

The rover will be responsible, among other things, for exploring, documenting and storing a set of Martian rock samples. This means that he will pick them up, push them into prepared metal cans, and then leave them on the ground, here and there, in strategic areas. From there, the future mission back samples will pick them up and bring them home.

For the achievement of the Sample Return mission, NASA works with its European counterpart, ESA. Both plan to run the Mars Sample Return mission between 2020 and 2030. STAGES
The first step in making this mission a reality is the launch of March 2020. As its name suggests, the The mission is expected to leave the Earth in the first year of the next decade, carried off by an Atlas V 541 rocket.

The rover will begin collecting samples to be sent to Earth carrying with him a space rock weighing 8.58 kg , found in Oman in 1999. It is believed that this rock originated in Mars and would become part of the environment Habitable Scanner with Raman and Luminescence for Organic and Chemical (SHERLOC) robot.

The second stage of the mission would be the launch of the Sample Return Lander a few years later. This is supposed to land on Mars, near the landing site of the 2020 mission. The LG is a platform from which a small ESA machine called Sample Fetch Rover would depart to the search for recipients left by 2020 rover.

Recipients collected would be transported to the LG platform and loaded into a single large canister. This box of basketball is in the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), the machine supposed to take the samples on Mars.

Once in orbit over Mars, the MAV container must go to the ESA Earth Return Orbiter. will catch it and then push it towards the Earth.

A few months after that, once in earth orbit and before being moved into a land-entry capsule, the container will be sealed in a biological containment system to avoid contaminating the Earth with unsterilized material

Orbiter and the Earth's input capsule are completed, the spaceship will return to Earth WHY
The need to bring back samples of Mars appeared because we become more more curious of our neighboring planet. Since a manned mission on Mars to study the planet on the site is still far away, bringing down rocks is the way to go.

The remote study of samples on Mars is a limited undertaking, since the instruments that can be inserted into the machines sent to Mars are not exhaustive. At the present time, planet Earth has three rovers on Mars: Opportunity, its spiritual brother, both part of the same mission, launched in 2003, and Curiosity, launched in 2011. After losing contact with Spirit in 2010, only Opportunity and Curiosity remain active

On Earth, studying Martian samples would allow sharing of resources, says ESA, and testing in the world's best labs. This would of course increase scientists' chances of discovering things never found before on Mars.

ESA plans to provide updates on the mission in 2019, requesting ministerial approval for the missions.

[ad_2]
Source link