Mars mission, NASA

The problem arose because two teams working on the Mars mission were using different sets of units. NASA s scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, assumed that the thrust data for the rockets on the Orbiter they received from Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, which built the spacecraft, were in metric units. In reality, the units were English. As a result the Orbiter dipped 100 kilometers lower into the Mars atmosphere than planned and the friction from the atmosphere caused the craft to burn up. 

October 18, 2002 [cited November 23, 2002]. . 

The surface of Mars is covered by meteorite craters, some up to 200 km in diameter. The question as to whether water exists on Mars has been the subject of scientific controversy for many years (see Chap. 11). Costly Mars missions with the goal of mapping the surface have afforded important results on now dry river valleys. The weather on Mars is characterized by ground-level fog, thin ice clouds and (often very violent) dust storms, which vary not only seasonally but also daily. The question as to whether our neighbour planet harbours life (of any kind), or if it ever did so, gave rise to a media sensation at a NASA press conference on August 7, 1996. The researchers, who had been studying the 1.9 kg Mars meteorite ALH 84001, came to the conclusion that it bore clear evidence of previous life forms ... 

JPL Special Review Board. Report on the loss of the Mars polar lander and deep space 2 missions. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 22 March 2000. 

DENDRAL is described in many computer science books as the first expert system. Moreover, it can be considered as one of the roots of chemoinformatics. Interestingly, even NASA was among the founders of this pioneering project, with the ambitious intention to supply future Mars missions with such software, to enable einalysis and interpretation of MS samples onboard a pilotless spacecraft and to broadcast only identified structural formulas back to earth instead of huge GC/MS data sets. 

Godwin, Robert, ed. Mars The NASA Mission Reports. Burlington, Ont. Apogee Books, 2000. 

As a follow-up to the success of the original Mars Rovers, NASA sponsored and developed the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) named Curiosity. This vehicle had the high-end Uthium-ion battery providing backup power to the U.S. Department of Energy s radioisotope energy generator. The MSL was launched on November 26, 2011 and landed on the surface of Mars on August 5, 2012. The anticipated duration of Curiosity s prime mission is one Mars year (669 Sols). 

Particularly important were the extensive warnings issued after the 1999 mishaps with the Columbia and the Mars missions. The SIAT report, in particular, covered almost everything in the CAIB report but three years before. The implementation of the findings of this report took place during a period of leadership transition at NASA. Particularly striking is the apparent inconsistency between the SIAT critique of NASA s efficiency and schedule focus, and the subsequent focus of the new Administrator, Sean O Keefe, on stretch goais and financial remedies. NASA seems to have had a learning opportunity that it missed. 

In any project, you must manage cost, schedule, performance, and risk. If the first three are fixed, as they were for the NASA Mars missions that failed in the 1990s, then the only relief valve available to a program manager is risk. In such a case, the probability of failure increases. 

The miniaturized Mossbauer instruments have proven as part of the NASA Mars Exploration Rover 2003 mission that Mossbauer spectroscopy is a powerful tool for planetary exploration, including our planet Earth. For the advanced model of MIMOS II, the new detector technologies and electronic components increase sensitivity and performance significantly. In combination with the high-energy resolution of the SDD, it will be possible to perform XRF analysis in parallel to Mossbauer spectroscopy. In addition to the Fe-mineralogy, information on the sample s elemental composition will be obtained. 

The instrument MIMOS II will be part of the upcoming ESA-NASA space missions ExoMars in 2018, and the Russian Space Agency sample return mission Phobos Grunt scheduled for launch in 2011 to visit the Mars moon Phobos. 

Iron is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Mossbauer (MB) spectroscopy is an established laboratory technique and a powerful tool to study Fe-bearing substances. The surface of Mars is Fe-rich compared to Earth, and a miniaturized MB spectrometer (MIMOS II) was developed for its robotic exploration as part of NASA s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission (Klingelhofer et al. 2003). 

Another special application of adsorption in space is presented by Grover et al. (1998). The University of Washington has designed an in situ resource utilization system to provide water to the life-support system in the laboratory module of the NASA Mars Reference Mission, a piloted mission to Mars. In this system, the Water Vapor Adsorption Reactor (WAVAR) extracts water vapor from the Martian atmosphere by adsorption in a bed of type 3A zeolite molecular1 sieve. Using ambient winds and fan power to move atmosphere, the WAVAR adsorbs the water vapor until the zeolite 3A bed is nearly saturated, and then heats the bed within a sealed chamber by microwave radiation to drive off water for collection. Tire water vapor flows to a condenser where it freezes and is later liquefied for use in tire life-support system. 

HARRY (Hap) Y. McSWEEN Jr. is Chancellor s Professor at the University of Tennessee. He has conducted research on cosmochemistry for more than three decades and was one of the original proponents of the hypothesis that some meteorites are from Mars. He has been a co-investigator for four NASA spacecraft missions and serves on numerous advisory committees for NASA and the US National Research Council. Dr. McSween has written or edited four books on meteorites and planetary science, and coauthored a textbook in geochemistry. He is a former president and Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of the Leonard Medal, and has an asteroid named for him. 

Reflecting the near inevitability of human missions to Mars and other locales in the solar system where life might exist, and given the interest of the public in the question, Are we alone , the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) commissioned the National Research Council, which formed the Committee on the Limits... 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has long given high priority to missions that ask whether extraterrestrial life might exist in the solar system and beyond. That priority reflects public interest, which was enhanced in the mid-1990s when fragments of Mars delivered to Earth as meteorites were shown to contain small structures reminiscent of microbial life. 

The laboratory and field studies that are recommended above are not expensive by any metric progress can be made with consistent NASA support at the 20 million annual level. That is a small fraction of the cost of a single launch of a space shuttle or of the contribution over the years to the space station, and it is a nearly negligible fraction of the cost of a human mission to Mars. Laboratory and field studies are a necessary component of such a mission. The results obtained from such studies not only will provide an answer to the question, Why go to Mars but also will be needed to prevent a human landing on Mars from vitiating a key discovery that might have the greatest of effects for science and society. 

Perhaps we will learn more about this fascinating planet when the new NASA Odyssey mission and the two planned NASA Mars Exploration Rover missions launch and reach Mars in the next few years. 

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