Building on the success of the two rover geologists that arrived at Mars in January, 2004, NASA's next rover mission is being planned for travel to Mars before the end of the decade. Twice as long and three times as heavy as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory will collect Martian soil and rock samples and analyze them for organic compounds and environmental conditions that could have supported microbial life now or in the past. The mission is anticipated to have a truly international flavor, with a neutron-based hydrogen detector for locating water provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency, a meteorological package provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, and a spectrometer provided by the Canadian Space Agency.
Mars Science Laboratory is intended to be the first planetary mission to use precision landing techniques, steering itself toward the Martian surface similar to the way the space shuttle controls its entry through the Earth's upper atmosphere. In this way, the spacecraft will fly to a desired location above the surface of Mars before deploying its parachute for the final landing. As currently envisioned, in the final minutes before touchdown, the spacecraft will activate its parachute and retro rockets before lowering the rover package to the surface on a tether (similar to the way a skycrane helicopter moves a large object). This landing method will enable the rover to land in an area 20 to 40 kilometers (12 to 24 miles) long, about the size of a small crater or wide canyon and three to five times smaller than previous landing zones on Mars.
Like the twin rovers now on the surface of Mars, Mars Science Laboratory will have six wheels and cameras mounted on a mast. Unlike the twin rovers, it will carry a laser for vaporizing a thin layer from the surface of a rock and analyzing the elemental composition of the underlying materials. It will be able to collect rock and soil samples and distribute them to on-board test chambers for chemical analysis. Its design includes a suite of scientific instruments for identifying organic compounds such as proteins, amino acids, and other acids and bases that attach themselves to carbon backbones and are essential to life as we know it. It can also identify features such as atmospheric gases that may be associated with biological activity.
Using these tools, Mars Science Laboratory will examine Martian rocks and soils in greater detail than ever before to determine the geologic processes that formed them; study the martian atmosphere; and determine the distribution and circulation of water and carbon dioxide, whether frozen, liquid, or gaseous.
NASA plans to select a landing site on the basis of highly detailed images sent to Earth by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, in addition to data from earlier missions. The rover will carry a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium's radioactive decay. This power source gives the mission an operating lifespan on Mars' surface of a full martian year (687 Earth days) or more while also providing significantly greater mobility and operational flexibility, enhanced science payload capability, and exploration of a much larger range of latitudes and altitudes than was possible on previous missions to Mars. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/present/msl/
SKA Pathfinder could help detect distant galaxies and explore universe with unprecedented precision.
Last Modified: 05 Oct 2012 12:03
Australia's science minister said the ASKAP will be 50 times more powerful than current radio telescopes [AFP]
Australia has unveiled a colossal radio telescope that will allow astronomers to detect distant galaxies and explore the depths of the universe with unprecedented precision.
The Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, located in the remote Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Western Australian desert, is made up of 36 antennas, each 12 metres in diameter. It was unveiled on Friday.
The $140m facility can survey the sky much faster than existing telescopes, with the antennae sensitive to faint radiation from the Milky Way, giving it the ability to detect distant galaxies.
Brian Boyle, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's ASKAP director, said that studying the radio waves would tell astronomers unique details about the cosmos.
"They can tell about the gas from which stars were formed and about exotic objects - pulsars and quasars - that really push the boundaries of our knowledge of the physical laws in the universe," he said.
"Radio-astronomy also gives us an insight into the very beginnings of the universe."
Chris Evans, the country's science minister, said the telescope was a major step forward for innovation in Australia.
"This will be 50 years worth of scientific research performed in Australia, providing world-leading scientific knowledge about our galaxies," he said.
'World's most powerful'
"It will be the world's most powerful radio astronomy telescope and has huge capabilities way beyond anything that currently exists," Evans told ABC radio.
The telescope is part of Australia's contribution to the broader $2.5b SKA project, jointly hosted with South Africa and New Zealand, which will have far greater capabilities.
That project will use a forest of antennae, spread across remote terrain, to pick up radio signals from cosmic phenomena that cannot be detected by optical telescopes.
It will be 50 times more powerful than current radio telescopes and will explore exploding stars, black holes, dark energy and traces of the universe's origins since 14 billion years ago.
Boyle said the ASKAP telescope would see more than 350 researchers from more than 130 institutions undertaking 10 survey science projects.
"There's one project to carry out a census of all the local galaxies within a few billion light years of us and that will give us the most accurate map of the mass around us... and how the Milky Way was formed," he said.
"There's another project to study all the magnetic fields in the universe to look at whether or not cosmic magnetism played a vital role in the formation of stars and galaxies."
The search for extraterrestrial life was a secondary objective.
"It is almost a parallel activity to all the survey work that's being done," Boyle told reporters.
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