Russia's NORD device may travel to Mars 2020

NORD will help Mars 2020 rover figure out how humans can best use the red planet's resources and which parts of Mars are the most suitable habitats for humans in terms of minerals.

A device created by Russian scientists is bidding for a chance to travel to Mars aboard NASA's Mars 2020 rover.

In about five months or so, it will be clear whether NORD, the brainchild of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute, will participate in the mission.

NASA launched a competition for Mars 2020 research proposals in September. By now, the application submission is already over.

Mars 2020 is due to succeed its elder brother, Curiosity MSL, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012. The new rover will be based heavily on the design of Curiosity.

The landing system and the chassis will be recreated without any additional engineering. This, NASA says, will reduce technical risks and make the project cheaper.

The main aim of the Curiosity mission was to find traces of past life-supporting environments on Mars. The goal has been achieved. Mars 2020 will look for traces of past life in those once-habitable environments.

Curiosity is equipped with DAN, a Russian-made neutron detector. DAN, or Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, measures the energy of neutrons leaking from the ground.

It can detect water content as low as one-tenth of one percent as deep as 20 inches.

If water is present, liquid or frozen, hydrogen atoms slow the neutrons down.

These slower neutrons are measured by DAN.

"NORD has no generator. We replaced it with a gamma spectrometer designed to measure natural radiation on Mar's surface and analyze the chemical composition of Martian soil in areas explored by the rover," Igor Mitrofanov, an IKI laboratory chief, told reporters.

NORD will help Mars 2020 rover figure out how humans can best use the red planet's resources and which parts of Mars are the most suitable habitats for humans in terms of minerals.

The rock and soil samples collected by Nord will be stored inside Mars 2020 for several years until a new spacecraft arrives and takes them over.

It will then have to blast off to Earth - a complicated task, much more difficult than even blasting off from Moon, as it requires a rocket powerful enough to escape Mars' gravity.

Water detection on Mars: Russian DAN Instrument on Curiosity

A Russian neutron detector (DAN) on board NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, designed to search for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path, was activated on Friday, the Russian manufacturer said. 

"The first scientific information has been received about the substance of Mars and its radiation background in the landing area," the Russian Academy of Sciences Space Research Institute said.

Curiosity successfully touched down on the Red Planet last Monday.

The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument, or DAN, will scout for underground clues to a depth of about 50 centimeters.

DAN will bring to the surface of Mars an enhancement of nuclear technology that has already detected Martian water from orbit.

By measuring the energies of the neutrons leaking from the ground, DAN can detect the fraction that was slowed in these collisions, and therefore the amount of hydrogen.

The neutron generator is mounted on Curiosity's right hip. A module with two neutron detectors is mounted on the left hip.

With pulses lasting about one microsecond and repeated as frequently as 10 times per second, key measurements by the detectors are the flux rate and delay time of moderated neutrons with different energy levels returning from the ground.

The generator will be able to emit a total of about 10 million pulses during the mission, with about 10 million neutrons at each pulse, NASA said.

The service camera installed on the $2.5 billion plutonium-powered rover has sent the first photos from the landing site in the Gale Crater, including one showing a wheel of the rover on the surface.

Curiosity, the biggest and the most scientifically complex Mars rover, will gradually turn on its scientific equipment to carry out geological and geo-chemical research, to study the planet's atmosphere and climate, and to search for water and organic substances.

Its findings will help to determine whether Mars was ever a habitable planet and whether it has any suitable places for habitation now.