Mars Science Laboratory: New Rover, New Science Equipment

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Instruments selected for MSL, including:
3 cameras
1 Martian ray gun (see ChemCam)
1 experiment capable of detecting organics

News Release: 2004-290 December 14, 2004



NASA Selects Investigations for the Mars Science Laboratory

NASA has selected eight proposals to provide instrumentation and associated science investigations for the mobile Mars Science Laboratory rover, scheduled for launch in 2009. Proposals selected today were submitted to NASA in response to an announcement of opportunity released in April.

The Mars Science Laboratory mission, part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, would deliver a mobile laboratory to the surface of Mars to explore a local region as a potential habitat for past or present life. The laboratory would operate under its own power. It is expected to remain active for one Mars year, equal to two Earth years, after landing.

In addition to the instrumentation selected, Mars Science Laboratory would carry a pulsed neutron source and detector for measuring hydrogen (including water), provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency. The project would also include a meteorological package and an ultraviolet sensor provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.

"This mission represents a tremendous leap forward in the exploration of Mars," said NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Ghassem Asrar. "MSL is the next logical step beyond the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers. It will use a unique set of analytical tools to study the red planet for over a year and unveil the past and present conditions for habitability of Mars," Asrar said.

"The Mars Science Laboratory is an extremely capable system, and the selected instruments will bring an analytical laboratory to the martian surface for the first time since the Viking landers over 25 years ago," said Douglas McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program director at NASA Headquarters.

The selected proposals will conduct preliminary design studies to focus on how the instruments can be accommodated on the mobile platform, completed and delivered consistent with the mission schedule. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the Science Mission Directorate.

Selected investigations and principal investigators:

-- "Mars Science Laboratory Mast Camera," Michael Malin, Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif. Mast Camera would perform multi-spectral, stereo imaging at lengths ranging from kilometers to centimeters, and can acquire compressed high-definition video at 10 frames per second without the use of the rover computer.

-- "ChemCam: Laser Induced Remote Sensing for Chemistry and Micro-Imaging," Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M. ChemCam would ablate surface coatings from materials at standoff distances of up to 10 meters and measure elemental composition of underlying rocks and soils.

-- "Mahli: Mars HandLens Imager for the Mars Science Laboratory," Kenneth Edgett, Malin Space Science Systems. Mahli would image rocks, soil, frost and ice at resolutions 2.4 times better, and with a wider field of view, than the Microscopic Imager on the Mars Exploration Rovers.

-- "The Alpha-Particle-X-ray-Spectrometer for Mars Science Laboratory,” Ralf Gellert, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany. This instrument would determine elemental abundance of rocks and soil. It will be provided by the Canadian Space Agency.

-- "CheMin: An X-ray Diffraction/X-ray Fluorescence instrument for definitive mineralogical analysis in the Analytical Laboratory of Mars Science Laboratory," David Blake, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. CheMin, would identify and quantify all minerals in complex natural samples such as basalts, evaporites and soils, one of the principle objectives of Mars Science Laboratory.

-- "Radiation Assessment Detector," Donald Hassler, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. This instrument would characterize the broad spectrum of radiation at the surface of Mars, an essential precursor to human exploration of the planet. The instrument would be funded by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

-- "Mars Descent Imager," Michael Malin, Malin Space Science Systems. The Mars Descent Imager would produce high-resolution color-video imagery of the descent and landing phase, providing geological context information, as well as allowing for precise landing-site determination.

-- "Sample Analysis at Mars with an integrated suite consisting of a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, and a tunable laser spectrometer,” Paul Mahaffy, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. This instrument would perform mineral and atmospheric analyses, detect a wide range of organic compounds and perform stable isotope analyses of organics and noble gases.

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A detailed description of the cameras is available here:

http://www.msss.com/press_releases/m...ion/index.html

The MastCam consists of two duplicate camera systems, mounted side by side to provide a stereo imaging capability. Each of the MastCam "eyes" is made of up a camera head, which includes the optics and detector, and a separate electronics box, which includes the image compressor and data buffer (Figure 1). The MastCam incorporates a number of innovative features that make it much more capable than previous rover cameras. Specifically:

* Zoom: each stereo eye of the MastCam has a 10:1 zoom lens,
* Single-frame color: in addition to being able to take images through narrowband filters, the MastCam can also take color images with a single exposure, like a consumer digital camera,
* High definition video: images can be acquired at 10 frames per second in HD (1280 x 720 pixel) format,
* Compression: the MastCam electronics compresses its own still and moving image data, relieving the rover computer of that computing burden, and
* Buffering: the MastCam has its own internal data buffer, which can hold thousands of still images or several hours of compressed HD video

This would be an appropriate time to have a "drool" emoticon.

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Well, we're going to have our "consumer digital camera" on Mars after all!

It's so nice: you post your wishes to the BABB and 2 days later it's on the specs of the next rover!


By the way, are they going to send 1 or 2 of these machines?

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I for one am quite excited about the video imagery (both descent and surface). Perhaps not the best science per megabyte, but fantastic public appeal.

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The descriptions all refer to it in the singular.

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Yeah, after I spent all that time in the other thread defending NOT doing that. #-o
I don't know from the specs how they will do that - how the actual CCD will be set up - are they going to sacrifice resolution for color? But maybe at 1280 x 760 video rates, they don't care! Hope the Mars network can handle the bandwidth...

I assume this is in addition to the navigational cameras?

I think the plan is for one. I recall Pete Theisinger saying that he would NEVER do 2 missions at once again - and IIRC he is now the MSL project head.

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

Sometimes a little eyecandy thrown in for the public at large doesn't hurt in generating support for projects.

You have to capture imaginations before you can educate minds.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

MER started out singular, too. :wink:

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Giant Mars rover will search for life

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Given its size and weight I suspect two is too much to hope for. But, in the same time frame we will have ExoMars, which, although smaller has a similarly spectacular science payload and has a nominal range of 16 km.

Jon

Why did this headline conjure up this image for me?



edited to fix pic link....

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

Flying a Science Lab to Mars

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I've to buy a new computer and change my ISP (Now it's 1024 kbps ADSL, but download speed from NASA always at 2 KB/s during daytime) to watch the MSL movies.

And I've read the MastCam itself will have 256 MB of SDRAM and 8 GB of flash "disk storage". The camera can do MPEG-2 video compression without using main CPU.

So if S&O were supposed to last 90 days but end up last 1000, does that mean this rover (which is supposed to last approximately 2 Earth years), will last 22 years? :wink:

Think of the science! 8)

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Reading that last entry caused this image to pop into my head.

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This ain't any ordinary rover it will use a new landing system that will place it within a few kilometers of an intended target. The MSL will be Nuke powered by an electrical generator which obtains its power from radioactive decay and it would totally dwarf the Russian Lunar-Lunokhod and the Pathfinder rover named Sojourner, the MSL would be 3 times the mass and double the size of the current MERs (Spirit and Opportunity)

There has been a price tag for the MSL project which is just under $1.5 billion – that includes the rover’s nuclear power source, as well as the launcher to hurl the hardware to Mars, there was talk of launching two of the roving labs Marsward ( like Spirit and Oppy mission ). It will be launched by the Atlas-5 rocket which has already put payload of 17,000 plus kg into LEO and launched the New Horizons to pluto and MRO spacecraft.

more info here
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-290
http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_2009_Rover.htm
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publ...s.html?1442005

MT's post merged into existing thread on same topic.

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Just something to think about, after the successful landing of Vikings One and Two, serious thought was given to mounting the third Viking lander on tractor treads and sending it to Mars as a mobile lab.

Sadly the budget crunch ended that idea, as did the price tag for the next such project which would have put a 450kg rover on Mars to collect rock samples for return to Earth.

Indeed, Phoenix will see NASA at last truly replicate the Viking mission and MSL will put the Vikings true successor on Mars.

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John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

NASA Weighs Power-Source Options for Mars Rover

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With Cassini, the argument was that in the event that something bad happened during one to the Earth fly-bys that the cannister could be broken open and we'd get some chemically nasty plutonium in the atmosphere. The threat during launch is minor to non-existant. Hopefully they'll get this one through the general public's review. There is no Earth fly-by in this mission.

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They'll still scream about launching it, then they'll scream about contaminating Mars, its not about logic, its about emotion.

As far as I'm concerned, if the level of concern is that high, then use a man rated booster to launch it. The level of safety required is fairly high in those, considering the cargo stability (i.e. people) is about as high priority as you can imagine. If that doesn't allay their concerns, its then feasible to dismiss their reactions as simple kneejerk regurgitation of someone's environmental tripe.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Heck, some of them think that Cassini should be aborted and smashed into one of Saturn's moons to eliminate the pretty much nonexistent chance that Cassini will leave Saturn orbit, come back to Earth, and burn up in the atmosphere.

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I hope this self-powered rover goes to a high latitude, where ice is near the surface (or where it has been on the surface in geologic recent times).

I'd really like to see what we could learn where ice could be within a meter or so of the surface. Although some kind of scoop or trenching tool would be nice to have, then.

BTW, I've been reading the Traveler's Guide to Mars, by William Hartmann. It's a horrible name, but a great book on geologic history of Mars, in a very readable format with great images. It was published in 2003, so it is pretty up to date, missing the most recent rover discoveries. I really recommend it.

Book on Amazon.com

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People, please find an ear-friendly synonym for nukeliar, so there is any chance of the general public chosing that option...

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Isn't an RTG a Stored Heat Battery? No need to bother with boring details like the form the heat is stored in. It's geological, a natural power source provided by the very self of mother Earth.