Monday, July 1, 2013

Beyond Curiosity: Will Future Investigations Bring Home Answers?

In 2020, NASA will be launching a new robotic science investigation regarding the possibility and the chances of life in the red planet. The duration of the mission will be one Mars Year (about 687 Earth days). The mission will be addressing key questions related to the presence of life in Mars. The mission would also make available opportunities to collect data and demonstrate technologies which deal with the challenges of future human expeditions to Mars. The mission would take benefit of a positive start on opportunity in 2020 when Earth and Mars are in advantageous positions in their orbits for a Mars landing. That means that it would take less power to get to Mars relative to other times, when Earth and Mars are in different positions in their orbits around the sun. Our scientists have the objectives of the mission under consideration, but until now, the ones they considered are; exploring an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars to decipher its geological processes and history and the potential preservation of possible biosignatures. This objective will lead, hopefully to a more clarifying pass way towards life on The Red Planet millions of years ago. Also, they will be looking forward to demonstrate important technical progress towards the future arrival of scientifically well documented samples to Earth. All together, this future investigation will bring along either more quests or answers to us, but we get the feeling that human race is insatiable, and there will always be a new quest to go for.

Leveraging Heritage Technology: Mars Rover Curiosity's Sky-Crane Maneuver, Artist's Concept This artist's concept shows the sky-crane maneuver during the descent of NASA's Curiosity rover to the Martian surface. The Mars mission launching in 2020 would leverage the design of this landing system and other aspects of the Mars Science Laboratory architecture.

Biology Group: Dayana Gonzalez and Teresa Blanco

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