You may or may not know that the Mars robot club is about to get bigger, with the addition
of the European Trace Gas Orbiter and a new lander or whatever.
TRACE gas orbiter.
Obviously it's cool.
Hi there Red Planet fanatics, Trace here for DNews!
Mars might already have plenty of orbiters and rovers hanging out.
But, it’s about to gain an awesome new orbiter-lander double-whhhhhammmmy!
ExoMars is actually two parts: the first, is an orbiter, wonderfully named the Trace
Gas Orbiter, and a lander named Schiaparelli.
The second is a European rover and Russian surface lander and that will launch in 2020.
It’s taken that first half of the ExoMars mission seven months to reach the red planet,
but once it arrives things get really exciting.
First, Schiaparelli detaches and after a 3-day coast to Mars, it will reach the Red Planet’s
upper atmosphere travelling an incredible 13,000 mph (20,921 km/h).
At that speed, you could go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a little over a minute
and a half!
As it plows through the atmosphere, the lander's heat shield will bear the brunt of the deceleration
and it only has 6 minutes to nail the perfect touchdown.
To do that, it will ditch the heat shield and use in-built parachutes designed for the
super thin Martian atmosphere.
And once it's slowed down, it will cut away the ‘chute and kick in some rocket power
to control the final landing.
The crazy bit, is at around 2 meters above the ground, the Schiaparelli lander will hover,
the engines will cut, and a specially designed “crushable structure” will absorb the
shock of the final fall like a car’s airbag.
Now, the lander is a bit of an experiment for the European Space Agency (ESA), because
they've never successfully landed on Mars before.
It's not easy about half of missions to Mars have failed.
So, Schiaparelli and the TGO are, in part, to test the technologies to safely land payloads
onto the Martian surface, and then to carry out science once there.
On the surface, should the landing be successful, Schiaparelli will become a temporary Mars
weather station, measuring wind speed and direction, air pressure, humidity and temperature
at its landing site.
Up in orbit, the TGO will act as a relay station, beaming back Schiaparelli’s data to Earth.
Alas, the lander is only battery-powered.
So it has a limited lifespan.
Once it completes 2 days of tasks, its mission will be over.
Considering NASA currently has two operational rovers on the surface, and previous landers
have carried a more sophisticated suite of instruments to the Mars than this mission…
this new Schiaparelli lander may, at first, seem a little lame.
But, c'mon!
This lander-orbiter double-act is only the first half of the awesome ExoMars mission
that will see a followup rover in 2020.
And the TGO isn’t just a glorified telephone operator for Schiaparelli and this future
ExoMars rover…
It will itself map methane in the Martian atmosphere, with the hope of pinpointing where
the gas is being produced.
Why?
Because methane can be produced by microbial life, so tracking down its source could be
a huge boon to astrobiologists hoping to uncover whether or not Mars CURRENTLY has a sub-surface
infestation of Martian bacteria!👌
This will set the stage is set for the 2020 rover arrival, and the second half of the
ExoMars mission.
That future rover will to hunt down life’s so-called "biosignatures."
Biosignatures are basically chemicals that can be produced by biological processes, so
their detection could point to evidence of past life on Mars, or, possibly, current life
on Mars!
The European Space Agency just sent its final commands to the little robot lander, that
is set to separate from the TGO on Oct. 16th, 2016 -- which is next week.
If all goes well, it will automatically land near the Red Planet’s equator in a region
called Meridiani Planum.
Needless to say, this is a crazy cool mission that we’ll be talking about for years to
come.
The ExoMars mission has only just begun…
Okay, in the spirit of science, I'm excited to announce that next week I will be a guest
judge at the Discovery Education: 3M Young Scientist Challenge finals.
You can register to watch the event live to see the presentations from the top 10 finalists.
They've been working all summer with a 3M Scientist Mentor to create their original
projects.
And they are awesome.
Biodegradable plastics, remote control robots to test water quality, plastic pollution reduction
using…
wait for it… pumpkins!
Seriously, I'm geeked.
You can register to watch live at YoungScientistChallenge.com / Final Event.
It's on Tuesday, October 18th from 11 am to 1 pm eastern.
Did you know there's a plan to get to Mars in three days?
Yep.
three.
You could be at Mars by Monday!
Check out how you'd be getting there, here.
I am obviously partial to the Mars Science Lab mission, known as Curiosity mission, it
was the first one I covered… but what's your favorite mars mission?
Let us know in the comments, keep coming back here every day for more DNews and please subscribe
so you get all our videos.