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Posted on 06/02/2003 10:19:38 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
MOSCOW -
An unmanned European spacecraft — poised for launch Monday on a Russian rocket — will orbit Mars for nearly two years and search for signs of life on the planet.
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The Mars Express spacecraft is to be launched by the Soyuz FG booster rocket from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:45 p.m. Monday (1:45 p.m. EDT), according to the Russian Space Forces, which runs the launchpad.
The European Space Agency vehicle, which cost $350 million, will initially be put into the Earth's orbit. About 90 minutes later, it will be given a final push to send it on a six-month journey to Mars — the ESA's first interplanetary mission.
Several days before the spacecraft reaches Mars in December, the British-built Beagle 2 lander is set to separate from the vehicle. It will parachute down to the Martian surface on Dec. 25. The tiny lander will head to Isidis Planitia, north of the Martian equator where traces of life could have been preserved.
Scientists think Mars once had plenty of water and appropriate conditions for life but lost it billions of years ago, possibly after being hit by asteroids. It is believed that water might still exist on Mars as underground ice.
The lander would dig into Mars to search for organic materials and check the atmosphere for traces of methane produced by living organisms — the first such search since 1976, when twin U.S. Viking landers brought inconclusive results.
Mars Express will map the planet, use a powerful radar to probe its surface for evidence of water, and measure water concentrations in the atmosphere.
NASA (news - web sites) is sending its own twin Mars Exploration Rovers later this month in a $800 million mission to try to answer the same questions about water and life on the planet. A Japanese spacecraft launched in 1998 also continues its voyage toward Mars, despite some electronic troubles.
The launching of many spacecraft at once isn't accidental: Celestial mechanics are bringing Mars and Earth closer together than they have been for a long time, helping save fuel and travel time.
Of 34 unmanned American, Soviet and Russian vehicles sent to Mars since 1960, two-thirds ended in failure.
The spacecraft that succeeded helped vastly expand human knowledge about Mars. Just 40 years ago, some experts still believed that thick vegetation grew on Mars — that belief was dispelled in the 1960s by NASA spacecraft which beamed back images of Mars' barren surface.
The operation to eject Beagle 2 will be highly delicate. The 143-pound lander — too light to have a steering mechanism — must rely on the 1.3-ton Mars Express to guide it into the proper descent path by dropping it at a very precise moment at a specified speed.
Once the lander is ejected, mission controllers will have to adjust Mars Express' trajectory and reduce its speed to allow gravity to capture the vehicle.
Mars Express is to remain in its Martian orbit for at least one Martian year, 687 Earth days. Its antenna will receive data from Beagle 2 and the orbiter's own instruments and beam it to Earth in daily communication sessions.
| Mon Jun 2,12:02 PM ET |
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A Russian Soyuz-FG booster rocket with the European Space Agency's Mars Express space vehicle is shown on a launchpad in the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan on Friday, May 30 2003. The spacecraft, to be launched on Monday, is set to reach Mars' orbit in half a year and drop its British built Beagle-2 lander. (AP Photo/ITAR-TASS) |
Mars Trip Uses Rocket That Once Threatened Europe
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Mars Trip Uses Rocket That Once Threatened Europe
By Dmitry Solovyov BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - If the Cold War had slipped into nuclear apocalypse, the Soyuz rocket would have borne the warheads sent to obliterate western Europe.
Now, as Europe prepares to send its first mission to Mars atop the Soviet workhorse Monday, the Soyuz has come to be the centerpiece of Russian and European space cooperation.
"The reliability of Soyuz is absolutely extraordinary and the best. It's a very well tried and very cleverly simple system," David Southwood, director of science at the European Space Agency (ESA), told Reuters.
The Soyuz/Fregat rocket will take off Monday on a nearly seven-month journey to the Red Planet, where the orbiter and lander it carries will seek traces of life and water.
The Mars Express mission is one of three setting off to the planet this month, all aiming to exploit a brief window when Earth and Mars are closest together, and is seen as a showcase of Russian and European partnership.
"Space is a very important field where now we see more and more cooperation between Russia and Europe," Jean-Marie Luton, the head of Starsem, a Russian-European company that specializes in Soyuz launches, told Reuters.
"There will be more events like this," he said. "Venus Express will follow." A joint European-Russian mission to Venus could come as early as 2005, space officials say.
Monday, workers prepared the giant Soyuz/Fregat booster as it stood in the scorching heat of Baikonur -- Russia's Soviet-era cosmodrome on the arid steppes of Kazakhstan.
Soyuz, which was developed as an inter-continental rocket codenamed R-7 and first successfully tested in 1957, became a source of great national pride.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev boasted during a visit to the United States that the Soviet Union was ready to produce nuclear rockets en masse "like sausages."
In 1961, a prototype of today's Soyuz booster, Vostok, carried first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space.
Decades later, European space experts say it is the reliability of the rocket that makes it so attractive.
Over 1,600 Soyuz rockets have been launched and shown a startling reliability rate of 98 percent to 99 percent.
"The Americans had big computers, the Russians had extraordinary mathematics," Southwood said. "What everyone sees is the elegant simplicity of the engineering here."
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Trio of Red Planet Robots Set for June Sendoff
By Leonard David
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Europe's Mars Express, toting the British-built Beagle 2 lander, remains set for launch June 2 and is to be the opening volley in a salvo of Mars robotic spacecraft heading outward to that compelling world during the coming weeks.
All is ready for the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan riding atop a commercially-procured Starsem Soyuz rocket with a Fregat upper stage.
Meanwhile, as Mars Express awaits departure, NASA (news - web sites)'s dual Mars Exploration Rovers are being prepped for sendoff. Now simply labeled MER-A and MER-B, the first craft is slated for dispatch from Florida's Space Coast no earlier than June 8. The second rover is to roar skyward on June 25.
Officials say this international squadron of Red Planet robots will open a new chapter in Mars inquiry.
Probing for water and life
The Mars Express orbiter is to haul along a suite of scientific instruments.
Circling Mars the spacecraft is equipped to:
While ESA's Mars Express swings about Mars, the United Kingdom's Beagle 2 is set to become the first lander since NASA's two Viking probes in the 1970s to expressly look for indications of past or present life.
No other Mars probe planned so far is centrally focused on making measurements with exobiology in mind, Beagle 2 scientists say.
Beagle 2 is to touch down Dec. 24 at Isidis Planitia, a flat basin on Mars with ground water ice possibly lurking a few feet below surface.
Meanwhile, NASA's two look-alike rovers are tasked to eke out the history of climate and water at two sites on Mars where conditions may once have been favorable to life.
The identical twins are being lofted individually and targeted to land in different parts of Mars: Meridiani Planum, an area thought to be rich in hematite, possibly a byproduct of ancient hot springs; and Gusev crater, perhaps an ancient lakebed.
Each Mars Exploration Rover is designed to parachute to an airbag-cushioned touch down. The first robot is to reach Mars on Jan. 4, 2004, followed by the second on Jan. 25.
Bon voyage
While the liftoff of Mars Express is near at hand, there's still a long road ahead, said Colin Pillinger, leader of the Beagle 2 team. He is head of Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England.
Pillinger said the recently released Mars Global Surveyor snapshot of Earth and our planet's moon from Mars is a kind of poignant image of what is being left behind.
"Beagle 2 leaves behind the best team of scientists and engineers imaginable," Pillinger told SPACE.com. "It carries with it our hopes for the future."
Still to come is the crossing of the interplanetary void and a very risky journey to the surface of Mars, Pillinger said. "It's too early to celebrate yet but we will wish our tiny craft bon voyage on Monday evening at the launch party."
The UK's Beagle 2 Mars Probe was built by Astrium, Stevenage.
Beagle 2 will be ejected from the Mars Express orbiter and fall onto the martian surface following parachute braking and inflation of gas-filled landing bags. The craft's landing weight is a mere 66-pounds (30-kilograms).
Once down on martian terrain, the probe stays put. It makes use of a robotic arm to reach about its landing spot.
Strike out or home run?
"The Beagle is not a toy. It's not a dog. Beagle is a scientific spacecraft with some of the highest quality scientific instruments that are ever to be placed on a planet," said Everett Gibson, a space scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Selected by ESA, Gibson is the only U.S. interdisciplinary scientist to work with the Beagle 2 lander for the Mars Express mission.
"Beagle 2 has the highest percentage of its mass devoted to science of any planetary probe that has been launched in the past or even planned," Gibson told SPACE.com. "It's going to be fun... to actually get a spacecraft on the surface that has the promise of relaying important information on potential biogenic signatures on Mars."
Those biogenic signatures could help unravel the story of life on Mars.
"We could strike out. But we're hoping to hit a home run," Gibson said.
Gibson said that the compact Beagle 2 should be a harbinger of things to come.
"Every orbiter that goes to Mars or other type body could carry a payload of the Beagle type," Gibson said. "Why not put a Beagle, or sons of Beagle, on every orbiter going to Mars in the future?"
Life on Mars: Could be old news
"Beagle 2 is a miracle of mind over matter... shooting for Mars by enormous will power, despite the infinitesimal budget that dictates its tiny size and payload. I hope it gets to Mars safely and realizes its high ambitions," said Gilbert Levin, the experimenter for the Viking Labeled Release experiment. He is now chief executive officer for Spherix Incorporated in Beltsville, Md.
Levin remains convinced that the Viking Labeled Release experiment did detect microbial life in the soil of Mars - not some strong oxidant that mimicked the signature of alive and well biology.
Levin said he is somewhat puzzled by those who claim Beagle 2 is a Mars life detection mission. Equipment carried by the lander, he feels, will not furnish unambiguous proof of living organisms on the Red Planet.
"However, I do eagerly await the Beagle 2 findings," Levin added.
"I feel certain no strong oxidants will be found on the surface of Mars, hopefully dealing a final blow to that discredited, but persisting theory. Also, I believe the results obtained by Beagle 2 will establish that water occurs in liquid form on the surface of Mars. Both results will add to the growing arguments supporting a biological interpretation of the 1976 Viking Labeled Release data," he said.
Scientific rationale
Anxiously awaiting the launch of the next batch of Mars probes is Bruce Jakosky, a Mars expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He senses, however, that Mars exploration actually passed a major milestone about a half-dozen years ago.
"The real turning point came with the widespread acceptance of the current scientific rationale for continuing to explore Mars," Jakosky said. "This approach centers on understanding Mars as an integrated system, including the current climate, the evolution of the atmosphere and surface, and the potential for life," he said.
Jakosky said this Mars exploration theme is embedded in the entire series of missions that have already flown, failed to reach the target, are flying now, or will fly over the next decade.
This includes the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and Japan's Nozomi mission still en route.
Then there's the back-to-back failure of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander, right up to the up-and-coming missions - Europe's Mars Express/Beagle 2 and NASA's dual Mars Exploration Rovers.
This armada of Mars missions is to be joined by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005 and the Mars Science Laboratory (also termed Mars Smart Lander at one time) in 2009.
"I don't really see us as being at a turning point in exploring Mars. However, each mission represents an important milestone in that exploration," Jakosky told SPACE.com.
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| Mon Jun 2, 2:29 PM ET |
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A hand out computer generated image, released June 2, 2003, shows the Beagle 2 space probe. The saucer shaped Beagle 2 probe, a British-led project, has been launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonour launch site and will parachute on to Mars in seven months time to transmit the first European pictures of Mars back to Earth. REUTERS/ESA |
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