Mars landing
Encyclopedia
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
on the surface of Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. Of multiple attempted Mars landings by robotic
Robotic spacecraft
A robotic spacecraft is a spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to...
, unmanned spacecraft, six were successful. There have also been studies for a possible manned mission to Mars
Manned mission to Mars
A manned mission to Mars has been the subject of science fiction, engineering, and scientific proposals throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century...
, including a landing, but none have been attempted.
Mars probe program
In 1969, the Soviet Union prepared a 5-ton orbiter called M-69. Two copies of the probe, Mars 1969AMars 1969A
Mars 2M No.521, also known as Mars M-69 No.521 and sometimes identified by NASA as Mars 1969A, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1969. It consisted of an orbiter and a lander. The spacecraft was intended to image the surface of Mars using three cameras, with images being...
and Mars 1969B
Mars 1969B
Mars 2M No.522, also known as Mars M-69 No.522 and sometimes identified by NASA as Mars 1969B, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1969. It consisted of an orbiter and a lander. The spacecraft was intended to image the surface of Mars using three cameras, with images being...
, were lost in launch related complications caused by problems with the newly developed Proton rockets.
In 1971, shortly after the Cosmos 419 (Mars 1971C)
Cosmos 419
Kosmos 419 was launched by the Soviet Union on May 10, 1971. Mars was at its closest to Earth since 1956 and, in May that year, both the Soviet Union and the United States made new attempts to reach the Red Planet. The payload however failed to separate from the fourth stage of the launch vehicle,...
, that intended to be a first Martian orbiter, was lost in the fourth stage of the launch due to issues concerning the failure in the separation of Cosmos' payload from the launch vehicle, the Soviet Union successfully sent probes Mars 2
Mars 2
The Mars program was a series of Mars unmanned landers and orbiters launched by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s.The Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions consisted of identical spacecraft, each with an orbiter and an attached lander; they were the first human artifacts to impact the surface of Mars...
and Mars 3
Mars 3
The Mars 3 was an unmanned space probe of the Mars program, a series of unmanned Mars landers and orbiters launched by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s....
, as part of the Mars probe program
Mars probe program
The Mars program was a series of unmanned spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1973. The spacecraft were intended to explore Mars, and included flyby probes, landers and orbiters....
M-71. The Mars 2 and 3 probes each carried a lander, both of which failed upon landing. They were the first human artifacts to touch down on Mars. Mars 2 lander impacted on Mars only while Mars 3 was the first Martian lander and was able to transmit from Martian surface during 20 second the first data and a portion of the first picture. These spaceprobes also contained the first Mars mini-rovers, although they were broken on landing.
The Mars 2 and 3 orbiters sent back a large volume of data covering the period from December 1971 to March 1972, although transmissions continued through to August. By 22 August 1972, after sending back data and a total of 60 pictures, Mars 2 and 3 concluded their missions. The images and data enabled creation of surface relief maps, and gave information on the Martian gravity and magnetosphere
Magnetosphere
A magnetosphere is formed when a stream of charged particles, such as the solar wind, interacts with and is deflected by the intrinsic magnetic field of a planet or similar body. Earth is surrounded by a magnetosphere, as are the other planets with intrinsic magnetic fields: Mercury, Jupiter,...
.
In 1973, the Soviet Union sent four more probes to Mars: the Mars 4 and Mars 5 orbiters and the Mars 6 and Mars 7 fly-by/lander combinations. All missions except Mars 7 sent back data, with Mars 5 being most successful. Mars 5 transmitted 60 images before a loss of pressurization in the transmitter housing, ended the mission. Mars 6 lander transmitted data during descent, but failed upon impact. Mars 4 flew by the planet at a range of 2200 km returning one swath of pictures and radio occultation
Occultation
An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden by another object that passes between it and the observer. The word is used in astronomy . It can also refer to any situation wherein an object in the foreground blocks from view an object in the background...
data, which constituted the first detection of the nightside ionosphere
Ionosphere
The ionosphere is a part of the upper atmosphere, comprising portions of the mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere, distinguished because it is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important part in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere...
on Mars. Mars 7 probe separated prematurely from the carrying vehicle due to a problem in the operation of one of the onboard systems (altitude control or retro-rockets) and missed the planet by 1300 km.
Years earlier, in 1970 Soviet Union began the design of Mars 4NM and Mars 5NM missions with superheavy unmanned Martian spacecrafts. First was Marsokhod with planned date of start in 1973 and second was Mars sample return mission
Sample return mission
A sample return mission is a spacecraft mission with the goal of returning tangible samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as dirt and rocks...
planned to 1975. Both spacecrafts intended to launch on N1 superrocket
N1 rocket
N-1 was a heavy lift rocket intended to deliver payloads beyond low Earth orbit, acting as the Soviet counterpart to the NASA Saturn V rocket. This heavy lift booster had the capability of lifting very heavy loads into orbit, designed with manned extra-orbital travel in mind...
. But this rocket never flew successfully and Mars 4NM and Mars 5NM projects were cancelled.
Viking program
Viking program
The Viking program consisted of a pair of American space probes sent to Mars, Viking 1 and Viking 2. Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts, an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars from orbit, and a lander designed to study the planet from the surface...
entered orbit about Mars and each released a lander module
Lander (spacecraft)
A lander is a spacecraft which descends toward and comes to rest on the surface of an astronomical body. For bodies with atmospheres, the landing is called atmospheric reentry and the lander descends as a re-entry vehicle...
that made a successful soft landing on the planet's surface. The two missions returned the first color pictures and extensive scientific information. Measured temperatures at the landing sites ranged from 150 to 250 K
Kelvin
The kelvin is a unit of measurement for temperature. It is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units and is assigned the unit symbol K. The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at which all...
, with a variation over a given day of 35 to 50 K. Seasonal dust storms, pressure changes, and movement of atmospheric gases between the polar caps were observed. A biology experiment
Viking biological experiments
The two Viking spacecraft each carried four types of biological experiments to the surface of Mars in the late 1970s. These were the first Mars landers to carry out experiments to look for biosignatures of life on Mars. The landers used a robotic arm to put soil samples into sealed test containers...
produced possible evidence of life, but it was not corroborated by other on-board experiments.
While searching for a suitable landing spot for Viking 2
Viking 2
The Viking 2 mission was part of the American Viking program to Mars, and consisted of an orbiter and a lander essentially identical to that of the Viking 1 mission. The Viking 2 lander operated on the surface for 1,281 Mars days and was turned off on 11 April 1980 when its batteries failed...
's lander, the Viking 1
Viking 1
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. It was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission, and until May 19, 2010 held the record for the second longest Mars surface mission of 6 years and 116 days .- Mission :Following...
orbiter photographed the landform that constitutes the so-called "Face on Mars" on July 25, 1976.
The Viking program was a descendant of the cancelled Voyager program
Voyager program (Mars)
The Voyager Mars Program was a planned series of unmanned NASA probes to the planet Mars. The missions were planned, as part of the Apollo Applications Program, between 1966 and 1968 and were scheduled for launch in 1974–75...
, whose name was later reused for a pair of outer solar system probes.
Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder was an American spacecraft that landed a base station with roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner.Launched on December 4, 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II booster a...
spacecraft, launched one month after Global Surveyor, landed on July 4, 1997. Its landing site was an ancient flood plain in Mars' northern hemisphere called Ares Vallis
Ares Vallis
Ares Vallis is an outflow channel on Mars, named after the Greek name for Mars: Ares, the god of war; it appears to have been carved by fluids, perhaps water...
, which is among the rockiest parts of Mars. It carried a tiny remote-controlled rover called Sojourner, which traveled a few meters around the landing site, exploring the conditions and sampling rocks around it. Newspapers around the world carried images of the lander dispatching the rover to explore the surface of Mars in a way never achieved before.
Until the final data transmission on September 27, 1997, Mars Pathfinder returned 16,500 images from the lander and 550 images from the rover, as well as more than 15 chemical analyses of rocks and soil and extensive data on winds and other weather factors. Findings from the investigations carried out by scientific instruments on both the lander and the rover suggest that Mars was at one time in its past warm and wet, with water existing in its liquid state and a thicker atmosphere. The mission website was the most heavily-trafficked up to that time.
Spate of failures
Mars 96
Mars 96 was a failed Mars mission launched in 1996 to investigate Mars by the Russian Space Forces and not directly related to the Soviet Mars probe program of the same name. After failure of the second fourth-stage burn, the probe assembly re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, breaking up over a...
, an orbiter launched on November 16, 1996 by Russia failed, when the planned second burn of the Block D-2 fourth stage did not occur.
Following the success of Global Surveyor and Pathfinder, another spate of failures occurred in 1998 and 1999, with the Japanese Nozomi orbiter and NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter
Mars Climate Orbiter
The Mars Climate Orbiter was a 338 kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, atmosphere, surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program, for Mars Polar Lander...
, Mars Polar Lander
Mars Polar Lander
The Mars Polar Lander, also referred to as the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander, was a 290-kilogram robotic spacecraft lander, launched by NASA on January 3, 1999, to study the soil and climate of Planum Australe, a region near the south pole on Mars, as part of the Mars Surveyor '98 mission...
, and Deep Space 2
Deep Space 2
Deep Space 2 was a NASA probe which was part of the New Millennium Program. It included two highly advanced miniature space probes which were sent to Mars aboard the Mars Polar Lander in January 1999. The probes were named "Scott" and "Amundsen", in honor of Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen,...
penetrators all suffering various fatal errors. Mars Climate Orbiter is infamous for Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....
engineers mixing up the usage of English units with metric units
Metric system
The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement. France was first to adopt a metric system, in 1799, and a metric system is now the official system of measurement, used in almost every country in the world...
, causing the orbiter to burn up while entering Mars' atmosphere.
Mars Express and Beagle 2
European Space Agency
The European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...
's Mars Express
Mars Express
Mars Express is a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency . The Mars Express mission is exploring the planet Mars, and is the first planetary mission attempted by the agency. "Express" originally referred to the speed and efficiency with which the spacecraft was...
set off from Baikonur Cosmodrome
Baikonur Cosmodrome
The Baikonur Cosmodrome , also called Tyuratam, is the world's first and largest operational space launch facility. It is located in the desert steppe of Kazakhstan, about east of the Aral Sea, north of the Syr Darya river, near Tyuratam railway station, at 90 meters above sea level...
to Mars. The Mars Express craft consists of the Mars Express Orbiter and the lander Beagle 2
Beagle 2
Beagle 2 was an unsuccessful British landing spacecraft that formed part of the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission. All contact with it was lost upon its separation from the Mars Express six days before its scheduled entry into the atmosphere...
. Although the landing probe was not designed to move, it carried a digging device and the smallest mass spectrometer created to date, as well as a range of other devices, on a robotic arm in order to accurately analyse soil beneath the dusty surface.
The orbiter entered Mars orbit on December 25, 2003, and Beagle 2 entered Mars' atmosphere the same day. However, attempts to contact the lander failed. Communications attempts continued throughout January, but Beagle 2 was declared lost in mid-February, and a joint inquiry was launched by the UK and ESA. Nevertheless, Mars Express Orbiter confirmed the presence of water ice and carbon dioxide ice at the planet's south pole. NASA had previously confirmed their presence at the north pole of Mars.
Mars Exploration Rovers
Shortly after the launch of Mars Express, NASA sent a pair of twin rovers toward the planet as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. On 10 June 2003, NASA's MER-A (Spirit) Mars Exploration Rover was launched. It successfully landed in Gusev Crater (believed once to have been a crater lake) on 3 January 2004. It examined rock and soil for evidence of the area's history of water. On July 7, 2003, a second rover, MER-B (Opportunity) was launched. It landed on 24 January 2004 in Meridiani PlanumMeridiani Planum
Meridiani Planum is a plain located 2 degrees south of Mars' equator , in the westernmost portion of Terra Meridiani. It hosts a rare occurrence of gray crystalline hematite...
(where there are large deposits of hematite
Hematite
Hematite, also spelled as haematite, is the mineral form of iron oxide , one of several iron oxides. Hematite crystallizes in the rhombohedral system, and it has the same crystal structure as ilmenite and corundum...
, indicating the presence of past water) to carry out similar geological work.
Flash memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000702/) delaying exploration for several days, both rovers eventually began exploring their landing sites. The rover Opportunity landed in a particularly interesting spot, a crater with bedrock outcroppings. In fast succession mission team members announced on 2 March that data returned from the rover showed that these rocks were once "drenched in water", and on 23 March that it was concluded that they were laid down underwater in a salty sea. This represented the first strong direct evidence for liquid water being on Mars at some time in the past.
Towards the end of July 2005, it was reported by the Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
that the rovers may have carried the bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
Bacillus safensis
Bacillus safensis
Bacillus safensis is a bacterium, highly resistant to gamma and UV radiation, that has raised some concerns over a possibility of having been brought to the planet Mars with the two space probes Spirit and Opportunity in 2004....
to Mars. According to one NASA microbiologist, this bacteria could survive both the trip and conditions on Mars. A book containing this claim, Out of Eden by Alan Burdick, is due to be published in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Despite efforts to sterilise both landers, neither could be assured to be completely sterile.
Having only been designed for three month missions, they both lasted much longer than planned, and Spirit lost contact with Earth in March 2010. Opportunity, however, continues to carry out surveys of the planet, and surpassed 50 miles on its odometer earlier this year. These rovers have discovered new things, including Heat Shield Rock
Heat Shield Rock
Heat Shield Rock is a basketball-sized iron-nickel meteorite found on Mars by the Mars rover Opportunity in January 2005. The meteorite was formally named Meridiani Planum meteorite by the Meteoritical Society in October, 2005 .-Discovery:Opportunity encountered the meteorite entirely by chance,...
, the first meteorite
Meteorite
A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...
to be discovered on another planet.
Phoenix Lander
Natural satellite
A natural satellite or moon is a celestial body that orbits a planet or smaller body, which is called its primary. The two terms are used synonymously for non-artificial satellites of planets, of dwarf planets, and of minor planets....
).
Future Missions
Phoenix is to be followed by the Mars Science LaboratoryMars Science Laboratory
The Mars Science Laboratory is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission with the aim to land and operate a rover named Curiosity on the surface of Mars. The MSL was launched November 26, 2011, at 10:02 EST and is scheduled to land on Mars at Gale Crater between August 6 and 20, 2012...
, a rover more capable than Spirit and Opportunity. Originally the Mars Science Laboratory was intended for a launch during 2009 however, the launch was delayed and is presently scheduled for between November 25 and December 18, 2011. A second Scout mission, MAVEN
MAVEN (spacecraft)
Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN is a planned space exploration mission to send a space probe to orbit Mars. Scientists conducting the mission will study the atmosphere of Mars...
has been selected for 2013. In the far future there's the proposed Mars Sample Return Mission
Mars Sample Return Mission
A Mars sample return mission would be a spaceflight mission to collect rock and dust samples from Mars and to return them to Earth for analysis...
, but this has been delayed until at least 2016, and more probably to 2024. This mission, a collaboration between ESA and NASA, is part of the Aurora Programme
Aurora Programme
The Aurora programme is a human spaceflight programme of the European Space Agency established in 2001 with the primary objectives of creating, and then implementing, a European long-term plan for exploration of the Solar System using robotic spacecraft and human spaceflight...
.
Russia plans to launch Phobos-Grunt
Phobos-Grunt
Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. It was launched on 9 November 2011 at 02:16 local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, but subsequent rocket burns intended to set the craft on a course for Mars failed, leaving it...
, a sample return mission
Sample return mission
A sample return mission is a spacecraft mission with the goal of returning tangible samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as dirt and rocks...
to Phobos
Phobos (moon)
Phobos is the larger and closer of the two natural satellites of Mars. Both moons were discovered in 1877. With a mean radius of , Phobos is 7.24 times as massive as Deimos...
, along with the joint Chinese Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter in late 2011 or early 2012.
The ESA
European Space Agency
The European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...
ExoMars
ExoMars
ExoMars is a European-led robotic mission to Mars currently under development by the European Space Agency with collaboration by NASA...
mission is tentatively planned for 2018. ExoMars should obtain soil samples from up to 2 meters depth and make an extensive search for organic and biochemical substances.
See also
- Mars roverMars RoverA Mars rover is an automated motor vehicle which propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars after landing.Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to...
- Exploration of MarsExploration of MarsThe exploration of Mars has been an important part of the space exploration programs of the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, and Japan. Dozens of robotic spacecraft, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, have been launched toward Mars since the 1960s...
- Manned mission to MarsManned mission to MarsA manned mission to Mars has been the subject of science fiction, engineering, and scientific proposals throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century...
- Colonization of MarsColonization of MarsThe colonization of Mars by humans is the focus of speculation and serious study because the surface conditions and availability of water on Mars make it arguably the most hospitable planet in the solar system other than Earth...
- Space weatherSpace weatherSpace weather is the concept of changing environmental conditions in near-Earth space or thespace from the Sun's atmosphere to the Earth's atmosphere. It is distinct from the concept ofweather within the Earth's planetary atmosphere...
- Google MarsGoogle MarsGoogle Mars was at first an in-browser version of Google Maps which provides a visible imagery view, like Google Moon, as well as infrared imagery and shaded relief of the planet Mars. Users can toggle between the elevation, visible, and infrared data, in the same manner as switching between map,...