This 2016 image comes from computer-assisted-design work on NASA’s 2020 Mars rover. The follow up to the highly successful Curiosity rover mission is scheduled for liftoff in the middle of 2020 and arrival at the Red Planet in February 2021 to begin its mission to explore areas that might once have harbored microbial life. Like curiosity, it will collect rocks and soil for study and future return to earth for further investigation. After a thorough evaluation process, NASA is ready to step into the stage of design and construction of what is going to be the next enhanced Mars science laboratory.
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The upcoming Mars rover mission will be a significant milestone in NASA’s journey to Mars since the mission deeply studies the existence of whether life existed on Mars.
Before NASA ventures into the human mission, the Mars rover mission is employed to conduct an initial study into the availability of Martian resources which includes Oxygen.
Mars rover 2020 will have a rack of tubes for holding soil and rock samples. They will then drop each core sample into a clean tube, use instruments on the rover to take a picture of the sample, seal the tube and then leave the samples in a pile so a future mission can pick them up. These specimens will also be used to determine any possible health hazards that could cause trouble for future human missions. Located on the rover’s robotic arm, these can investigate a piece of rock the size of a postage stamp to look at the structure, fabric, element and mineral make-up of Martian rocks, as well as identify and map the distribution of organic molecules.
The rover will also use ground-penetrating radar to characterize the subsurface environment.
The new rover will also be created to land safely in more challenging terrain.
The six-wheel machine will also be equipped with cameras and a microphone that will “capture the never-before-seen or heard imagery and sounds of the entry, descent and landing sequence” of the rover, said NASA. Allen Chen describes the difference between the Curiosity’s landing and the Mars Rover 2020 landing. “Better understanding the Martian dust and weather will be valuable data for planning human Mars missions”.
The robot is modeled after the Curiosity rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2012.
“This will be a great opportunity for the public to hear the sounds of Mars for the first time, and it could also provide useful engineering information”, Matt Wallace, the Mars 2020 deputy project manager, said in a statement.
Once a mission receives preliminary approval, it must go through four rigorous technical and programmatic reviews – known as Key Decision Points (KDP) – to proceed through the phases of development prior to launch. This allowed the development team to use tested systems and already built components in the three earlier design and fabrication phases. Mars 2020 has just passed its KDP-C milestone.
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NASA says that the rapid progress of Mars 2020 is due in part to using so much of Curiosity’s design. However, the discovery of Mars Rover Curiosity discovered that the landing area may once have hosted a lake or some types of streams that could have once provided a habitable place for organisms billions of years ago. Mission scientists would use the probe’s science instruments will be used to look for the signs of life on Mars. It will be interesting to see what the Mars Rover 2020 will reveal. Caltech in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
