Review of NASA's Planned Mars Program (1996) / Chapter Skim
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3 OVERVIEW OF MARS SURVEYOR AND OTHER MARS MISSIONS
3 OVERVIEW OF MARS SURVEYOR AND OTHER MARS MISSIONS
Pages 16-27
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From page 16... ...
Mars Surveyor is a congressionally authorized program of Mars exploration that will start with the 1996 launch of Mars Global Surveyor and that will last for at least a decade. The program's funding is strictly capped at approximately $100 million per year, with an additional annual sum of $20 million for operations and $36 million for launch vehicles.
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From page 17... ...
Illustration courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mars Pathfinder Mars Pathfinder was originally conceived primarily as an engineering test to develop an inexpensive entry, descent, and landing system for future Mars landers, and to pioneer ways of doing planetary missions at significantly lower costs than were typical of past endeavors.
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From page 18... ...
for chemical analysis of rocks and soil. Assessment of Mars Pathfinder The science results will depend on what is visible at Pathfinder's landing site and what is accessible for analysis.
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From page 19... ...
Mars Global Surveyor is only half as massive as Mars Observer and will carry spare copies of five of its predecessor's seven instruments. These include the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
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From page 20... ...
4 Assessment of Mars Global Surveyor The original scientific goals of Mars Observer were to understand better the planet's climate, the nature of its interior, and the evolution of the martian surface. These objectives, which are contained within the themes of the Mars Surveyor program, were to be achieved by systematically monitoring the state of the atmosphere; by global mapping of various properties (e.g., surface composition and elevation)
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From page 21... ...
In addition to PMIRR, the spacecraft will carry an integrated wide- and medium-angle imager (Mars Surveyor 1998 Orbiter Color Camera) weighing 1 kg (for comparison, the cameras on Mars Observer and Mars Global Surveyor are some 20 times more massive)
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From page 22... ...
lander is equipped with a descent imager, a 1-kg lidar system furnished by Russia's Space Research Institute, and an integrated science payload designed to monitor the weather conditions and assess the nature of the volatiles in the layered terrain on the northern edge of Mars's southern polar cap. The surface science package, the Mars Volatile and Climate Surveyor, consists of a mast-mounted stereo imager and meteorological instruments, a thermal and evolved gas analyzer, and a 2-m-long robotic arm equipped with a sampling device and a microscope camera.
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From page 23... ...
The elliptical orbit of the PlanetB spacecraft is designed to allow in situ measurements of the compositions of atmospheric ions and neutral species, and of magnetic fields and plasma waves, to altitudes down to at least 150 km. Preliminary Assessment of Planet-B Planet-B's studies of Mars's upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind represent an important step toward filling a major gap in the Mars Surveyor program as currently defined.
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From page 24... ...
2003 LAUNCH OPPORTUNITY NASA currently has no defined mission plans for the 2003 launch opportunity. As part of its Horizon 2000 Plus strategic plan, 7 the European Space Agency (ESA)
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From page 25... ...
While IDDs can be equipped with a primitive form of autonomous navigation, their lifetime and ranges will be severely limited because they are so small that they will have trouble surviving nighttime temperatures of ~180 K Microrovers and IDDs may be the sole size of vehicle permissible for a NASA-only Mars program in the next decade.
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From page 26... ...
3 John Niehoff, "Mars Rover/Sample Return Mission Overview," presentation to Space Science Board Ad Hoc Study Group Feasibility Study of Joint Mars Sample Return Mission, April 28, 1987. 4 European Space Agency (ESA)
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From page 27... ...
6. Mars Aeronomy Observer Science Working Team, Mars Aeronomy Observer: Report of the Science Working Team, NASA Technical Memorandum 89202, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., October 1, 1986.
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