Universe Today

November 21, 2003 by Fraser Cain

Canadian Arrow’s Engine Tested

Image credit: Canadian Arrow

The Canadian Arrow X-Prize team has performed a successful low-pressure test of their liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol rocket engine, bringing them one step closer to winning the $10 million X-Prize. The Canadian Arrow is based on the design of a World War II German V-2 rocket, but it’s been updated with modern technology. The team has scheduled several more tests of the rocket engine at higher pressures, and hopes to make an actual launch attempt some time in 2004.

The Canadian Arrow X PRIZE Team has successfully tested the rocket engine that is designed to, in the coming months, take passengers into space.

The test, conducted late last evening at a test site north of London confirms that the Canadian Arrow Team has successfully reengineered a World War II rocket design into a modern technology that is capable of winning the $10 million X PRIZE.

“Our team has spent five years researching, designing and building toward the test we performed tonight,” said Canadian Arrow Team Leader Geoff Sheerin. “We had a perfect ignition and good clean burn. There were a lot of smiles here, that’s for sure.”

The engine, with 57,000 pounds of thrust, is modeled after the German V-2 rocket engine and is believed to be the largest liquid propellant engine ever built in Canada. It is fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol and at full pressure, consumes approximately 250 pounds of propellant per second. Last night’s test was at partial pressure, and opens the door to higher pressure testing.

The engine and test stand are part of a 45 ft. tall structure that is surrounded on three sides by concrete walls that are two feet thick. Large berms stand between the engine test structure and the control centre that is built into the ground, and is where the team electronically directed and monitored the test.

“This has taken us a bold leap closer to our flights that will capture the X PRIZE,” said Sheerin. “It wasn’t just a test of our engine, but of our test stand, support equipment, team capabilities and many other things that will be necessary to support full launch capabilities.”

Next steps for the team will include continued testing of the engine to prepare it for actual flight onboard the first Canadian Arrow spacecraft that is scheduled for launch next year. When successful, the Arrow will make Canada the fourth nation to put humans into space.

Sheerin thanked his Team for their long hours and dedication. “Most importantly,” he told them, “we have taken the next step toward our stated goal of ‘making space for you.’

Original Source: Canadian Arrow News Release

November 20, 2003 by Fraser Cain

Auroras in Scotland

Hey everyone, I just got an email from Robert Law at the Mills Observatory that he’s seeing auroras in sky above Scotland which are as spectacular as those many of you saw a few weeks ago. This is no guarantee, but if your skies are clear, maybe you’ll see an aurora too. While you’re at it, there’s still a chance to see some of the Leonid meteors.

Let me know if you have any luck. Send me an email at [email protected].

Good luck!

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

November 20, 2003March 23, 2012 by Fraser Cain

Book Review: A Traveler’s Guide to Mars

Over the last few hundred years, humans have been exploring the planet Mars – first through telescopes, and more recently from orbit and on the ground. During this time we’ve gone from complete ignorance to a fairly deep understanding of the Red Planet. William K. Hartmann has been a scientist on several missions to Mars, and in his latest book, “A Traveler’s Guide to Mars,” he details our current understanding of the geologic process that have shaped the planet.

First, a little history about William Hartmann. He cut his Martian teeth as a scientist on the Mariner 9 mission, which was the first spacecraft to map Mars in detail. He was part of the team that discovered craters, ancient riverbeds and volcanoes. He was an early contributor to the widely accepted theory that the Moon formed when a Mars-sized planet crashed into the Earth. And he’s currently studying the data retrieved by the Mars Global Surveyor.

This guy knows his Mars.

“A Traveler’s Guide to Mars” traces our understanding of Mars, starting with the early sketches by Huygens and Percival Lowell (who incorrectly thought that Martians had built a complex system of canals to conserve the planet’s water). When Mariner 9 arrived at Mars in the early 1970s, it complete revised our understanding of the planet, showing that it was dry and pummeled with ancient asteroid impact craters. The history section of the book is pretty short.

The bulk of the book explores the planet, feature by feature, and describes how planetary scientists arrived at their current understanding about what’s going on. Scientists believe certain areas of Mars are unchanged for 4.5 billion years, while others have been under constant change until recently. Hartmann presents the evidence and shows you how to spot the clues and think like a planetary scientist.

I think this is one of my favorite aspects of the book. Time after time Hartmann presents the challenge: what caused this formation? what’s going on in this crater? how long was this river flowing? And then he presents the evidence and the decision-making process that planetary scientists followed to arrive at their current conclusions. And if nobody has a clue, he admits that too. There are plenty of mysteries left on Mars – hopefully new spacecraft and missions to Mars will help fill in pieces of the puzzle.

The book is broken up with one/two-page sections called “My Martian Chronicles”, which detail Hartmann’s personal experiences exploring Mars through the eyes of Mariner 9 and Mars Global Surveyor. I really enjoyed this personal touch. Since Hartmann is an experienced fiction writer, his style is very casual and accessible. Easy reading for the amateur space enthusiast.

I was really impressed with “A Traveler’s Guide to Mars”. It’s given me a new understanding of the planet. Definitely a handy book to have on hand as a new fleet of spacecraft are about to arrive at the Red Planet.

More information from Amazon.com – Amazon.ca – Amazon.co.uk

November 20, 2003December 19, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Update on the Mars Rovers

Image credit: NASA/JPL

In case you’d forgotten about them, NASA’s twin Mars Exploration spacecraft, Spirit and Opportunity, are still on their way to the Red Planet. Spirit made its third trajectory correction last week to fine-tune its flight path as it gets closer. Both rovers have rebooted their computers in the past two weeks to remove any data errors that could have caused by the recent powerful solar storms. Spirit should arrive at the Gusev Crater on January 4, 2004, while Opportunity will land Meridiani Planum on January 25.

NASA’s Spirit spacecraft made its third trajectory correction maneuver on Friday, Nov. 14, fine tuning its flight path toward Mars with an engine-firing operation planned into the seven-month trip.

The trajectory adjustment was designed to alter Spirit’s velocity by 0.6 meters per second (1.3 miles per hour), moving the arrival point by 770 kilometers (478 miles) and arrival time by 16.5 minutes closer to the planned target location and time, said Louis D’Amario, the project’s navigation team chief. To accomplish that adjustment, the flight team commanded Spirit to fire its engines for 132 seconds in the direction of the spacecraft’s rotation axis and for short pulses totaling 27 seconds in a direction roughly perpendicular to the rotation axis.

Spirit has three more scheduled dates for additional trajectory corrections before reaching Mars less than seven weeks from now. The spacecraft is carrying the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers equipped to examine the geology around their landing sites for evidence about past environmental conditions.

Both Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, have rebooted their computers in the past two weeks. Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., sent commands for that procedure on each spacecraft to correct possible corruption of computer memory registers by radiation from powerful solar flares in late October and early November. The flares were among the most intense ever recorded.

“We had no evidence of memory problems, but we considered it prudent to reboot both spacecraft to assure memory integrity, using the sleep-wake cycle that we plan to do each night after the rovers are on the surface of Mars,” said JPL’s Peter Theisinger, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

High-energy protons ejected by the stormy Sun appeared on Oct. 28 as bursts of bright spots in star-tracking instruments used by both Spirit and Opportunity to sense the spacecrafts’ orientation. The instruments interpreted the proton hits as stars, so the bursts overwhelmed their ability to recognize star patterns and determine spacecraft attitude. Both spacecraft temporarily switched to a backup method of attitude sensing, using the Sun. They resumed use of the star trackers last week.

Spirit’s target is arrival at Mars’ Gusev Crater at 04:35 Jan. 4, 2004, Universal Time (8:35 p.m. Jan. 3, Pacific Standard Time and 11:35 p.m. Jan. 3, Eastern Standard Time). These are “Earth received times,” meaning they reflect the delay necessary for a speed-of-light signal from Mars to reach Earth; on Mars, the landing will have happened nearly 10 minutes earlier. Three weeks later, at 05:05 Jan. 25, Universal Time, Opportunity will arrive at a level plain called Meridiani Planum on the opposite side of Mars from Gusev. Each rover will examine its landing area for geological evidence about the history of water there, key information for assessing whether the site ever could have been hospitable to life.

As of 6 a.m. PST on Nov. 19, Spirit had traveled 396.5 million kilometers (246.4 million miles) since its June 10 launch, with 91.5 million kilometers (56.2 million miles) to go before reaching Mars. Opportunity, launched on July 7, had traveled 326 million kilometers (202 million miles) and has 130 million kilometers (81 million miles) yet to go.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Additional information about the project is available from JPL at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer and from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., at http://athena.cornell.edu.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

November 20, 2003 by Fraser Cain

Station in Orbit for Five Years

Image credit: NASA

The International Space Station has been in orbit for five years as of November 20, 2003. The first element of the station, the Russian Zarya control module, was launched on November 20, 1998, and then quickly followed up by the US-built Unity module. Since then, the station has orbited the Earth 29,000 times and has been inhabited since November 2, 2000. Eight successive crews, 22 people, have staffed the station and performed research in bioastronautics, physical sciences, fundamental space biology, space product development and space flight disciplines. Happy birthday ISS.

The International Space Station reaches the historic five years in space milestone on November 20, 2003. The unique orbiting laboratory complex has grown from a lone, uninhabited module into a permanently staffed, house-sized research facility.

The Station remains the largest and most complex international space research project in history. The Station will eventually triple scientific capacity with components awaiting the Space Shuttle’s return to flight.

The first Space Station element, the Russian Zarya control module, was launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Nov. 20, 1998. Two weeks later, the Space Shuttle Endeavour delivered the second element, the U.S. connecting module called Unity. The challenges, triumphs and tragedy shared by the international partnership since then have solidified cooperation on the Station among the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe.

“Together with our international partners we have learned how to build, operate and maintain a very complex spacecraft, through the good times and the bad,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Space Station Program Manager. “With this experience to guide us, we look forward to the future, with a vast expansion of the Station on the horizon.”

At five years old, the Station is still growing. More than 80 tons of equipment and hardware are in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla. being prepared for launch.

The Space Station has orbited the Earth more than 29,000 times. It is visible in the night sky as it flies more than 210 miles overhead. The living and working area inside the Station has a volume of about 15,000 cubic feet, larger than a three-bedroom house.

The orbiting complex has been inhabited since Nov. 2, 2000. Eight successive crews, 22 people, have staffed the Station. Residents have conducted research in bioastronautics, physical sciences, fundamental space biology, space product development and space flight disciplines. In the U.S. Destiny Lab alone, astronauts have worked on over 70 different science experiments.

Hundreds of people on Earth support Station operations from the Station Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Round-the-clock science operations are handled by the Payload Operations Center team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Hundreds of other scientists and engineers perform important jobs, such as training Station crews and building new hardware that will become part of the orbiting laboratory.

Additional research facilities are being readied for launch on future Shuttle missions. They will enhance Destiny’s capabilities in the areas of fundamental space biology; glass and porous ceramics materials processing research; human physiology research; combustion research; research on the behavior of fluids; Earth observations; and experiment refrigerator/freezer conditioned sample storage.

Also awaiting launch at KSC are solar arrays and support structures that will triple the sunlight-gathering, solar cell area, thereby increasing the power dedicated to research by 84 percent.

The Node 2 module that will serve as a connector between the U.S., European and Japanese research labs is at KSC undergoing pre-launch processing. The Kibo Japanese Experiment Module, including a pressurized lab already at KSC, will also be added to the Station. The European Columbus Laboratory, under construction in Bremen, Germany, will expand the Station’s volume to almost that of a five-bedroom house.

For information about NASA, human spaceflight, astronauts, and the International Space Station on the Internet, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Original Source: NASA News Release

November 19, 2003 by Fraser Cain

1,000 People Have Joined the Forum!

The Universe Today forums reached a pretty big milestone this week with the addition of our 1,000th member – not bad for only four months. There’s lots to talk about, so if you’re interested in connecting with other space enthusiasts, come take a look, sign up, and join the conversations – it’s totally free.

I’d like make a special thanks to all the moderators. They’ve been working furiously behind the scenes to make sure everyone plays nice.

Click here to access the Universe Today forums.

I know it can be a little confusing to get going in the beginning, so if you have any questions, please drop me an email at [email protected].

Thanks!

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

November 19, 2003March 24, 2012 by Fraser Cain

NASA Reforms Safety Panel

Image credit: NASA

NASA has set up a new safety advisory panel to replace the previous group that resigned back in September following the Columbia accident investigation report. The new ten members make up the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, and will be an independent group responsible for safety oversight of NASA operations. This new safety board will play a key role in helping to ensure the space shuttles are safe to return to flight later in 2004.

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe today announced the new NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), which includes nine distinguished members and a new charter. The initial meeting of the new panel is expected soon.

“The Columbia Accident Investigation Board report clearly indicated we need to get back to basics with our safety assessment,” said Administrator O’Keefe. “By recommitting ourselves to the original concept for the ASAP, we believe a stronger, more focused advisory panel will benefit the entire agency well beyond our Return to Flight efforts.”

The ASAP was originally chartered by Congress in 1967 after the tragic Apollo One fire, to act as an independent body to advise the NASA Administrator on safety issues regarding operations, missions and other agency initiatives. The new charter calls for the ASAP to be composed of recognized safety, management and engineering experts from industry, academia and other government agencies.

Over the years, administrative procedures were added to govern the conduct of the panel. These procedures have been revoked, and the new panel will have the opportunity to develop its agenda in concert with the oversight findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

“By drawing on and tasking the technical support of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, the panel will have a deep capacity to conduct comprehensive, independent, external oversight of our safety systems, operations and culture. We welcome the members’ active participation in our efforts to emerge from the Columbia tragedy a smarter, stronger and safer agency dedicated to exploration,” said Administrator O’Keefe.

In late September 2003, 11 ASAP members and consultants resigned in the wake of the Columbia accident.

The new ASAP members are:

Rear Admiral Walt Cantrell, USN (Ret)

Former Commander, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
Member, NASA Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group
Former NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel member

Vice Admiral Joe Dyer, USN (Ret)

Former Commander, Naval Air Systems Command
General Manager, Military Systems Division, iRobot Corporation

Augustine Esogbue, Ph.D.

Professor and Director, Intelligent Systems & Controls Laboratory, School of
Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Major General Rusty Gideon, USAF (Ret)

Former Commander, U.S. Air Force Safety Center, and USAF Chief of Safety
Former Director of Operations, Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command
Former Commander, Foreign Aerospace Science and Technology Center

Deborah Grubbe

DuPont Corporate Director — Safety and Health
Member, National Academy of Sciences
Former consultant, Columbia Accident Investigation Board

Rosemary O?Leary, J.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Public Administration and Political Science, Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, New York
Member, NASA Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group

John Marshall

Delta Airlines, Vice President Corporate Safety and Compliance, Atlanta
Co-chair, Commercial Aviation Safety Team
Board member, National Defense Transportation Association

Steve Wallace

Director, Office of Accident Investigation, Federal Aviation Administration
FAA representative to National Transportation Safety Board
Former Columbia Accident Investigation Board member

Rick Williams

Corporate Safety Director, Alcoa, New York
Former Director, Human Resources, Alcoa Primary Metals, Knoxville, Tenn.

Brigadier General Joseph Smith, USA — Ex-Officio Member

Director, U.S. Army Safety Center, Fort Rucker, Ala.

The new ASAP will begin with the original charter, signed by then-NASA Administrator James E. Webb. New provisions help assure an independent, long-term oversight of the agency’s safety policies and programs. Some of the revisions include:

* The new ASAP will report quarterly instead of annually
* The term for new members is two years, extendable to a maximum of six years in order to stagger terms of service and ensure a fresh perspective at regular intervals
* The new ASAP focuses on NASA’s safety and quality systems. ASAP will focus on industrial and systems safety, risk management, trend analysis and the management of these activities

“We’ve taken extra steps to ensure the independence of this panel,” said Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance Bryan O’Connor. “While the original law and the new charter allow for NASA members, none of the new members is a current or former agency employee or contractor.”

The new ASAP is also expected to play an important role in the ongoing safety assessment and review of the Space Shuttle program after Return to Flight. “We intend for the ASAP to oversee our implementation of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s recommendations long after the work of the Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group is completed,” added Administrator O’Keefe. “Our intent is to institutionalize a renewed commitment to safety, and the panel will help us assure that we follow through on that objective.”

The new Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel charter and member biographies are available on the Internet, at:

http://www.nasa.gov/news/highlights/returntoflight.html

Original Source: NASA News Release

November 18, 2003December 19, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Gravity Probe B Launch Delayed

Image credit: NASA

NASA has decided to push back the launch of its mission to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Gravity Probe B, until December 6. During recent tests, engineers noticed electronic noise coming from the sensor attached to one of the spacecraft’s gyros, so they’ve extended the launch date to find time to fix it. Once it does launch, Gravity Probe B will detect any distortions on its four spinning gyroscopes to detect the Earth’s distortion of spacetime around it – as predicted by Einstein.

After a review of test data, a decision has been made to reschedule the launch of Gravity Probe B (GP-B). The launch had been scheduled for Dec. 6 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Data obtained during spacecraft prelaunch testing shows electronic noise on an output channel associated with the No. 1 experiment gyro. This could compromise the quality of data received from it. The problem has been isolated to a component in the spacecraft?s experiment control unit (ECU). While there is a second available output channel for this gyro, a postponement of the launch will allow time for a repair. This precaution will restore full redundancy to the experiment and provide the greatest chance for success over the planned 16-month life of the mission.

At Space Launch Complex 2, the rocket has successfully completed the scheduled prelaunch preparations up to this time, and there are no issues or concerns with the Delta II. The current plans are for it to remain at the pad enclosed within the gantry-like mobile service tower until the spacecraft arrives.

The length of the postponement will not be known for about a week until a course of action has been developed to address the GP-B problem.

Original Source: NASA News Release

November 17, 2003 by Fraser Cain

Chandra Sees the Most Distant X-Ray Jet

Image credit: Chandra

The most distant jet ever seen was recently photographed by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The jet is huge, blasting 100,000 light years out of a quasar 12 billion light years away – astronomers are seeing it when the Universe was only 1.4 billion years old. This gives astronomers an opportunity to study the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation, as light from the jet needs to move through the sea of particles left over from the Big Bang.

The most distant jet ever observed was discovered in an image of a quasar made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Extending more than 100,000 light years from the supermassive black hole powering the quasar, the jet of high-energy particles provides astronomers with information about the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation 12 billion years ago.

The discovery of this jet was a surprise to the astronomers, according to team members. Astronomers had previously known the distant quasar GB1508+5714 to be a powerful X-ray source, but there had been no indication of any complex structure or a jet.

“This jet is especially significant because it allows us to probe the cosmic background radiation 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang,” said Aneta Siemiginowska of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of a report on this research in the November 20th Astrophysical Journal Letters. Prior to this discovery, the most distant confirmed X-ray jet corresponded to a time about 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

Quasars are thought to be galaxies that harbor an active central supermassive black hole fueled by infalling gas and stars. This accretion process is often observed to be accompanied by the generation of powerful high-energy jets.

Radio Image of GB1508
As the electrons in the jet fly away from the quasar at near the speed of light, they move through the sea of cosmic background radiation left over from the hot early phase of the universe. When a fast-moving electron collides with one of these background photons, it can boost the photon’s energy up into the X-ray band. The X-ray brightness of the jet depends on the power in the electron beam and the intensity of the background radiation.

“Everyone assumes that the background radiation will change in a predictable way with time, but it is important to have this check on the predictions,” said Siemiginowska. “This jet is hopefully just the first in a large sample of these distant objects that can be used to tell us how the intensity of the cosmic microwave background changed over time.”

“In fact, if this interpretation is correct, then discovery of this jet is consistent with our previous prediction that X-ray jets can be detected at arbitrarily large distances!” said team member Dan Schwartz, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Chandra originally observed GB1508+5714 with the purpose of studying the X-ray emission from the dust located between the Earth and the far-flung quasar. The jet was found by Siemiginowska and her colleagues when they examined the data once it became available publicly in the Chandra archive.

This led another astronomer to then carefully look at radio observations of the object. Indeed, archived Very Large Array data confirmed the existence of the jet associated with the quasar GB1508+5714. A paper on the radio observations of GB1508+5714 has been accepted by Astrophysical Journal Letters from Teddy Cheung of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

Another group of astronomers led by Weimen Yuan of the University of Cambridge, UK independently reported the discovery of the extended emission in GB1508+5714 in X-rays. In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the authors note that significant energy is being deposited in the outer regions of the host galaxy at a very early stage. This energy input could have a profound effect on the evolution of the galaxy by triggering the formation of stars, or inhibiting the growth of the galaxy through accretion of matter from intergalactic space.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington. Northrop Grumman of Redondo Beach, Calif., formerly TRW, Inc., was the prime development contractor for the observatory. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Original Source: Chandra News Release

November 17, 2003March 18, 2013 by Fraser Cain

Bringing Back a Piece of Mars

Image credit: ESA

The European Space Agency is planning a mission to study the surface of Mars by picking up material from the surface and returning it to the Earth. The Mars Sample Return mission will consist of two parts: the return capsule will launch in 2011 and go into orbit around Mars; the lander and ascent module will launch two years later and land on the planet to collect a sample from a depth of 2 metres. It will then launch into Mars’ orbit, link up with the return capsule, and bring the sample back to the Earth.

What is the next best thing to humans landing on Mars and exploring the wonders of the Red Planet? The answer: touching, imaging and analysing carefully preserved samples of Martian rock in a state-of-the-art laboratory on Earth.

If all goes according to plan, this is exactly what ESA?s long-term Aurora Programme of solar system exploration will achieve a decade from now, when the first samples of Mars material will be sealed in a special capsule and returned to Earth for analysis.

The first step towards making this great leap in human knowledge a reality was taken at the end of October with the announcement of the winners of competitive contracts for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, the second Flagship robotic mission to be proposed as part of Aurora.

The parallel contracts for the Phase A studies that will carry out a full mission design iteration for the MSR have been placed with two industrial teams.

One team, headed by Alenia Spazio (Italy), includes Alcatel (France), Dutch Space (Netherlands), ELV (Italy) and MDR (Canada). The other team, headed by EADS Astrium (UK), also includes Astrium SAS (France), EADS ST (France), Galileo Avionica (Italy), RAL (UK), SAS (Belgium), SENER (Spain) and Utopia Consultancies (Germany).

?The industrial proposals received were of outstanding quality, reflecting the enthusiasm and the commitment of the industrial teams who prepared them,? said Bruno Gardini, Aurora Project Manager.

Bringing Mars back to Earth
As currently envisaged, the MSR will be a two-stage endeavour. First, a spacecraft that includes a return capsule will be launched in 2011 and inserted into orbit around Mars. Then, two years later, a second spacecraft carrying a descent module and a Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) will be launched on a similar trajectory.

During its final approach to Mars, the descent module/MAV will be released and make a controlled landing on the planet. A robotic drill will then collect a soil sample from a depth of 1? to 2 metres and seal it inside a small canister on the ascent vehicle. Other samples of Martian soil and air may also be gathered and stored inside the canister.

Carrying its precious samples, the MAV will lift off from the surface, then rendezvous and dock with the spacecraft in Martian orbit. After receiving the canister loaded with Martian rocks, the spacecraft will return to Earth with the re-entry capsule containing the samples and send it plummeting into the atmosphere.

Slowed by a parachute or inflatable device, the capsule will make a fairly gentle touchdown before recovery teams retrieve the container from the landing site and deliver it to a planetary protection facility where the samples will be removed to await analysis by eager scientists. The design of the capsule will ensure that the structural integrity of the sample container remains intact, even if the parachute fails to open and a crash landing occurs.

?The Mars Sample Return mission is one of the most challenging missions ever considered by ESA,? said Gardini. ?Not only does it include many new technologies and four or five different spacecraft, but it is also a mission of tremendous scientific importance and the first robotic mission with a similar profile to a possible human expedition to Mars.?

A number of the critical technologies required for the success of this ambitious endeavour have yet to be developed in Europe, e.g. re-entry of spacecraft arriving from deep space at a high velocity. As a preliminary stage in developing a vehicle capable of bringing back samples from Mars, it was considered necessary to develop this re-entry capability and to demonstrate its maturity as part of the Aurora Programme. Feasibility studies for a dedicated Arrow mission, known as the Earth re-entry Vehicle Demonstrator (EVD), were recently announced.

In the same way, testing of the complex rendezvous and docking techniques will be carried out as an experiment on the ExoMars mission, the first Flagship mission of the Aurora Programme. The Phase A industrial study contracts for the ExoMars mission began in September.

Original Source: ESA News Release