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Are we alone? NASA's Mars rover aims to find out
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Aug 5, 2012

Successes and failures in past Mars attempts
Pasadena, California (AFP) Aug 5, 2012 - Fewer than half of the attempts by global space agencies to reach Mars have succeeded since 1960, with the United States in the clear lead. Here is a list of past key Mars missions:

SUCCESSES

December 1971: The Soviet space agency's Mars 3 lander reaches the Red Planet's surface but its instruments stop working after 20 seconds, likely due to massive dust storms at the time of landing.

July/August 1976: US space agency lands two probes, Viking 1 and 2, the first to send images and perform chemical analysis of the soil on the Red Planet.

September 1997: NASA's Mars Pathfinder succeeds in the first deployment of a lander and small free-ranging robotic rover on the Mars surface.

January 2004: The US space agency's rovers Spirit and Opportunity land successfully on Mars. Opportunity continues to send back data today.

May 2008: NASA's Mars Phoenix works for 155 days in the planet's arctic region.

FAILURES

November 1960: Soviet space agency launches Sputnik 22, an attempted Mars flyby mission, but it disintegrates after entering Earth's orbit.

November 1971: Soviet space agency's Mars 2 crashes on Red Planet's surface.

March 1974: Soviet space agency's Mars 6 goes silent before landing.

Mars 1974: Soviet space agency's Mars 7 is lost before entering Mars' orbit.

November 1996: Russian space agency's Mars 96 fails at launch.

December 1999: NASA's Mars Polar Lander crashes on Mars.

December 2004: European Space Agency's Beagle 2 attempts Mars landing but contact is lost before touchdown.

There have also been multiple attempts to send orbiters to circle the Red Planet or do flybys. Today there are three orbiters in operation around Mars, two US-launched (Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) and one European (Mars Express).

Most recently was Russia's failed attempt to launch its Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, a $165 million spacecraft designed to travel to the Martian moon of Phobos, scoop up soil and return the sample to Earth by 2014. Mission control lost radio contact with the craft hours after the November 2011 launch, and in January the 13.5 ton vessel plunged into the ocean.



Are we alone? Or was there life on another planet? NASA's $2.5 billion dream machine, the Mars Science Laboratory, aims to take the first steps toward finding out when it nears Mars's surface on Monday.

Scientists have found signs of water on Red Planet, which is Earth's neighbor, hinting that some form of life was once likely even though Mars is now a dry place with a thin atmosphere, extreme winters and dust storms.

NASA said it will find out whether its Mars Science Laboratory and rover, Curiosity -- designed to hunt for soil-based signatures of life and send back data to prepare for a future human mission -- landed safely at 1:31 am Eastern time (0531 GMT) on Monday.

That will be about 14 minutes after the touchdown actually happens due to the time it takes for spacecraft signals to travel from Mars to Earth.

As of late Saturday, the laboratory was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at around 8,000 miles per hour.

"Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected," NASA said in a statement.

The nuclear-powered rover is the biggest ever built for planetary exploration -- weighing in at one ton, about the size of a small car -- and carries a complex chemistry kit to zap rocks, drill soil and test for radiation.

The landing is a daring and unprecedented maneuver that involves penetrating the atmosphere at a speed of 13,200 miles per hour, slowing down with the help of a supersonic parachute and dropping down gently with tethers from a rocket-powered sky crane.

"This is the most challenging landing we have ever attempted," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

Two NASA orbiters will be crossing overhead as the lander approaches the surface, and a third orbiter operated by the European Space Agency will also send data back to Earth.

The Mars Science Laboratory began its journey more than eight months ago when it launched from the Florida coast in late November 2011.

"It gets scarier every day," said McCuistion, noting that only about 40 percent of past attempts by global space agencies to send spacecraft to Mars have succeeded.

"Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I am confident the team has done an amazing job," he said.

"But that risk still exists. It is going to be tough."

NASA has detailed the final minutes of the complex landing in an Internet video called "Seven Minutes of Terror."

A live broadcast from mission control in Pasadena, California will be on www.nasa.gov beginning at 0330 GMT Monday. Final press briefings are scheduled for 1630 GMT and 2200 GMT on Sunday.

The landing site for the rover is a flat area known as Gale Crater, which lies near a mountain that scientists hope the rover will be able to climb in the search for sediment layers that could be up to a billion years old.

One potential factor of concern, the weather, appears to be cooperating after a nearby dust storm spotted days ago dissipated, deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada told reporters.

"Mars is playing nice and we are going to get good conditions for Sunday," he said.

If the landing goes according to plan, NASA hopes to have some low-resolution black and white images taken from cameras on the rear of the rover shortly afterward.

More images will follow in the coming days. Then, engineers on Earth will spend most of August remotely checking out systems on the vehicle, according to deputy program manager Richard Cook.

The rover is carrying a chemistry kit that contains a rock-zapping laser, 17 cameras, a drill, radiation detectors, water sensors, and tools to scoop soil and check for carbon-based compounds that are the building blocks for life.

Curiosity may start to roll for its first drive in September, with its first scoop samples expected late in the month and its first drilling attempt in October or November.

If the landing fails, McCuistion vowed that NASA would continue its efforts to explore Mars.

"We will pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off," he said.

"Human spirit gets driven by these kinds of challenges and these are the kinds of challenges that force us, drive us to explore. To explore our surroundings, to understand what is out there, and obviously look at 'Are we alone?'"

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Key facts about NASA's Mars Science Laboratory
Pasadena, California (AFP) Aug 5, 2012 - Here are some key facts about the mission of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover, the most sophisticated robotic vehicle ever built for planetary exploration, which aims to land on the red planet August 6.

MISSION: To study the Gale Crater near Mars's equator for signs that life may once have existed, and for clues about past and present habitable environments on the Red Planet. It is designed to function for 98 Earth weeks, or about one Martian year.

LAUNCH:

The mission launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on November 26, 2011 atop a two-stage Atlas V 541 rocket by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed. The journey to Mars has taken about 8.5 months, or 254 days.

LANDING:

"Seven minutes of terror" is a popular Internet video featuring top NASA scientists who describe the final touchdown scheduled for August 6 at 0531 GMT.

This is the first attempt of its kind to land a heavy vehicle on Mars by using a rocket-powered sky crane.

Entry, descent and landing begins when the spacecraft reaches the top of Mars's atmosphere, traveling at a speed of 13,200 miles per hour (5,900 meters per second).

Ten minutes before the spacecraft enters the atmosphere, it sheds its cruise stage, or the parts that carried propellant tanks and antennae to keep the spacecraft on course to Mars and enable communications.

It then goes through a period of peak heating as it enters the Mars atmosphere. A parachute is deployed, the heat shield separates and the rocket-powered sky crane deploys nylon cords to lower the rover to the surface.

Touchdown should occur at 1.7 miles per hour.

VEHICLE: A car-sized robotic rover with six wheels, nicknamed Curiosity. It weighs about one ton (900 kilograms) and cost $2.5 billion. The concept first emerged in 2000 and was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

TOOLKIT: Ten instrument-based science investigations are on board:

1) Mast camera (MASTCAM) contains two megapixel color cameras that act as the left and right eye of the rover, and are capable of returning stills, video and 3D images.

2) Chemistry and Camera (CHEMCAM) is a rock-vaporizing laser and telescope combination that can target a rock 23 feet (seven meters) away, burn it and analyze the light that emerges to identify the chemical elements inside.

3) Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) is on the robotic arm and can identify chemical elements in rocks and soil.

4) Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) is a color camera on the end of the robotic arm for use in getting closeups of the ground or wider scenes of the landscape.

5) Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) analyzes powdered rock and soils with X-ray diffraction.

6) Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) has three tools to check for carbon-based compounds that are the building blocks for life, examine the chemical state of other elements important for life and search for clues about planetary changes.

7) Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) records daily and seasonal changes in the weather on Mars.

8) Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) monitors high energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun that could pose a danger to astronauts if a human mission to Mars ever occurs.

9) Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) can detect underground water beneath the rover at a distance of 20 inches (50 centimeters).

10) Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) records full-color video of the final few minutes of the rover's descent onto the Martian surface. A few images are expected back within days of the landing, but the full video may take longer.



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MARSDAILY
Newest NASA Mars Mission Connects Past and Future
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 03, 2012
NASA's newest Mars mission, landing in three days, will draw on support from missions sent to Mars years ago and will contribute to missions envisioned for future decades. "Curiosity is a bold step forward in learning about our neighboring planet, but this mission does not stand alone. It is part of a sustained, coordinated program of Mars exploration," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars ... read more


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