MEP (Mars Environment Package): toward a package for studying environmental conditions at the surface of Mars from future lander/rover missions.
نویسندگان
چکیده
In view to prepare Mars human exploration, it is necessary to promote and lead, at the international level, a highly interdisciplinary program, involving specialists of geochemistry, geophysics, atmospheric science, space weather, and biology. The goal of this program will be to elaborate concepts of individual instruments, then of integrated instrumental packages, able to collect exhaustive data sets of environmental parameters from future landers and rovers of Mars, and to favour the conditions of their implementation. Such a program is one of the most urgent need for preparing human exploration, in order to develop mitigation strategies aimed at ensuring the safety of human explorers, and minimizing risk for surface operations. A few main areas of investigation may be listed: particle and radiation environment, chemical composition of atmosphere, meteorology, chemical composition of dust, surface and subsurface material, water in the subsurface, physical properties of the soil, search for an hypothesized microbial activity, characterization of radio-electric properties of the Martian ionosphere. Scientists at the origin of the present paper, already involved at a high degree of responsibility in several Mars missions, and actively preparing in situ instrumentation for future landed platforms (Netlander--now cancelled, MSL-09), express their readiness to participate in both ESA/AURORA and NASA programs of Mars human exploration. They think that the formation of a Mars Environment working group at ESA, in the course of the AURORA definition phase, could act positively in favour of the program, by increasing its scientific cross-section and making it still more focused on human exploration.
منابع مشابه
Convective Vortices on Mars: a Reanalysis of Viking Lander
Introduction: On 7 August 1976 the Viking 2 lander touched down at Utopia Planitia, Mars. Both Viking lander’s primary aim was to look for the presence of organic life on the surface of Mars. The lander also had a comprehensive meteorological package to monitor the martian conditions. The meteorological package included pressure, temperature, and wind sensors, enabling the landers to perform th...
متن کاملAutonomous Rover Technology for Mars Sample Return
Planetary rovers enable good sample selection and retrieval for Mars sample return missions. After landing, the rovers search for the best possible scientific samples in the region around a lander, and they return these selected samples to an ascent vehicle that launches the samples into Mars orbit. To streamline the search for, the acquisition, and the retrieval of samples, rover autonomy is a...
متن کاملAn Integrated Planning and Scheduling Prototype for Automated Mars Rover Command Generation
With the arrival of the Pathfinder spacecraft in 1997, NASA began a series of missions to explore the surface of Mars with robotic vehicles. The Pathfinder mission included Sojourner, a six-wheeled rover with cameras and a spectrometer for determining the composition of rocks. The mission was a success in terms of delivering a rover to the surface, but illustrated the need for greater autonomy ...
متن کاملEnvironmental Monitoring Station for Mars Science Laboratory
The Viking Landers measured pressure, wind speed and direction, and air temperature with a small boom [1]. Mars Pathfinder had the Atmospheric Structure Instrument on its lander and recorded pressure, air temperature and wind direction [2]. MSL has environment sensors within its payload as well: it is the REMS (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station) instrument, which is in charge of recording ...
متن کاملFault Tolerant Action Selection for Planetary Rover Control
The ability of a small rover to operate semi-autonomously in a hazardous planetary environment was recently demonstrated by the Sojourner mission to Mars in July of 1997. Sojourner stayed within a 50 meter radius of the Pathhnder lander. Current NASA plans call for extended year-long, multikilometer treks for the 2003 and 2005 missions. A greater deal of rover autonomy is required for such miss...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Advances in space research : the official journal of the Committee on Space Research
دوره 34 8 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2004