Washington, U.S.A. — NASA’s newest Mars mission, landing on a few 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 Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This mission transitions the program’s science emphasis from the planet’s water history to its potential for past or present life.”

As the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft places the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars next week, NASA will be using the Mars Odyssey orbiter, in service since 2001, as a relay for rapidly confirming the landing to Curiosity’s flight team and the rest of the world. Earth will be below the Mars horizon from Curiosity’s perspective, so the new rover will not be in direct radio contact with Earth. Two newer orbiters also will be recording Curiosity’s transmissions, but that data will not be available on Earth until hours later.

When Curiosity lands beside a mountain inside a crater at about 1:31 a.m. EDT, Aug. 6 (10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5), the 1-ton rover’s two-year prime mission on the surface of Mars will begin. However, one of the rover’s 10 science instruments, the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), already has logged 221 days collecting data since the spacecraft was launched on its trip to Mars on November 26, 2011.

“Our observations already are being used in planning for human missions,” said Don Hassler of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., principal investigator for Curiosity’s RAD.

The instrument recorded radiation spikes from five solar flare events spewing energetic particles from the sun into interplanetary space. Radiation from galactic cosmic rays, originating from supernova explosions and other extremely distant events, accounted for more of the total radiation experienced on the trip than the amount from solar particle events. Inside the spacecraft, despite shielding roughly equivalent to what surrounds astronauts on the International Space Station, RAD recorded radiation amounting to a significant contribution to a NASA astronaut’s career-limit radiation dose.

Curiosity’s main assignment is to investigate whether its study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. To do that, it packs a science payload weighing 15 times as much as the science instruments on previous Mars rovers. The landing target, an area about 12 miles by 4 miles (20 kilometers by 7 kilometers), sits in a safely flat area between less-safe slopes of the rim of Gale Crater and the crater’s central peak, informally called Mount Sharp. The target was plotted to be within driving distance of layers on Mount Sharp, where minerals that formed in water have been seen from orbit.

“Some deposits right inside the landing area look as though they were deposited by water, too,” said John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, project scientist for Curiosity. “We have a great landing site that was a strong science contender for earlier missions, but was not permitted for engineering constraints because no earlier landing could be targeted precisely enough to hit a safe area inside Gale Crater. The science team feels very optimistic about exploration of Mount Sharp and the surrounding region that includes the landing ellipse.”

Mission engineers designed a sky crane maneuver, lowering Curiosity on nylon cords from a rocket backpack because the rover is too heavy to use the airbag system developed for earlier rovers. “We know it looks crazy,” said Adam Steltzner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, leader of the team that developed the system. “It really is the result of careful choices.” By designing the aeroshell enclosing Curiosity to create lift and be steerable, engineers were able to build a system that lands much more precisely instead of dropping like a rock.

Image Courtesy of   kropic1 / Shutterstock.com

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NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) may decide to withdraw from the ExoMars Program due to hefty budget cuts.

Recently, President Barack Obama filled out the 2013 Federal Budget Request, which will be released today. NASA received a massive blow to its budget, prompting its administrators to debate which programs should be cut. A decision weighed between exploring the planets in our solar system or adventuring out into the cosmos. In the end, several programs for planets were cut. Mars was hit the most. According to Associated Press, the current budget for Mars missions is $518.7 million, and more than $200 million has been slashed.

“To me, it’s totally irrational and unjustified,” Edward Weiler, who is formerly NASA’s associate administrator for science, says to MSNBS.com. Weiler quit because he, according to MSNBC, tried to prevent Mars from being in the pool for the cuts. “We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue.”

The ExoMars Program is a collaboration of NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency). Their goal, according to the website, is to “search for evidence of past and present life on Mars.” Two missions have been planned thus far. The first, led by the ESA, is to send a satellite launched by NASA to Mars in 2016 that will search for traces of methane in the atmosphere.

The second plans to send, in 2018, two rovers (one American and one European), which will drill into the red planet’s surface. This mission will be both led and launched by NASA, who will have provided the materials and technical attributes. NASA promised to provide $1.4 billion for both missions.

If NASA truly withdraws, ESA will look to involve Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency. They worry, however, that Roscosmos does not have the same technical skills and assets as NASA. Furthermore, ESA would have to deal with the fact that the program will have lost a large amount of money – the missions would be hindered and delayed.

NASA has been in a bind with costs, using much their budget, for example, to replace the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope with their current successful Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope, which was originally estimated to cost $3 billion, would be more than a hundred times powerful than Hubble.

“Even in these times of fiscal restraint, President Obama has laid out an ambitious plan of exploration and discovery for NASA that includes robotic missions to Mars as well as the ultimate goal of a human mission,” NASA HQ in Washington tells BBC. “It would not be appropriate to comment on specifics of the president’s budget before it is released on 13 February.”

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NASA’s car-sized ‘Curiosity’ rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet. Curiosity launched on Nov. 26 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. aboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The rover carries an instrument called the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) that monitors high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun, distant supernovas and other sources.

These particles constitute radiation that could be harmful to any microbes or astronauts in space or on Mars. The rover also will monitor radiation on the surface of Mars after its August 2012 landing.

“RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars,” said Don Hassler, RAD’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. “The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way an astronaut would be. Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars.”

Previous monitoring of energetic-particle radiation in space has used instruments at or near the surface of various spacecraft. The RAD instrument is on the rover inside the spacecraft and shielded by other components of MSL, including the aeroshell that will protect the rover during descent through the upper atmosphere of Mars.

Spacecraft structures, while providing shielding, also can contribute to secondary particles generated when high-energy particles strike the spacecraft. In some circumstances, secondary particles could be more hazardous than primary ones. These first measurements mark the start of the science return from a mission that will use 10 instruments on Curiosity to assess whether Mars’ Gale Crater could be or has been favorable for microbial life.

“While Curiosity will not look for signs of life on Mars, what it might find could be a game- changer about the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One thing is certain: the rover’s discoveries will provide critical data that will impact human and robotic planning and research for decades.”

As of noon EST on Dec. 14, the spacecraft will have traveled 31.9 million miles (51.3 million kilometers) of its 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) flight to Mars. The first trajectory correction maneuver during the trip is being planned for mid-January.

Southwest Research Institute, together with Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, built RAD with funding from the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, and Germany’s national aerospace research center, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt.

The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission’s rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

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