NASA and ISRO Mars-Bound Probes Nearing the Red Planet

This illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars, imagined with Earth in the background.

Credit: NASA/Goddard

Two Mars-bound spacecraft are both in excellent health ahead of their September arrivals in orbit around the Red Planet, managers for both missions report.

Indian Space Research Organization (MOM) is more than 80 percent of the way to Mars and performing well, according to a Facebook update posted July 21 by the Indian Space Research Organization, MOM is expected to enter orbit on Sept. 14.

The second craft, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), is also performing well.

MAVEN is scheduled to embark on its final approach to the Red Planet on Sept. 21, one week after MOM's arrival, principal investigator Bruce Jakosky said.

After months of checkouts and tests, the spacecraft will now be left quiet until close to the big day.

"We have eight science instruments, and they've all been turned off now," Jakosky, who is also the associate science director at the University of Colorado's laboratory for atmospheric and space physics, told Space.com. "We're trying to settle things down to focus on orbit insertion."

Both MOM and NASA's MAVEN probes launched toward Mars in November 2013.



Collision avoidance
With the MAVEN mission, NASA scientists are hoping to learn more about the history of Mars' upper atmosphere. For the past few months, controllers have done "operational readiness" tests, such as a mission-control-like simulation of the craft's approach to the Red Planet.

These drills can help controllers get ready for any emergencies that might crop up.

One important feature of the spacecraft is its ability to maneuver six hours or 24 hours before entering orbit if controllers find out the vessel is on the wrong path, Jakosky said.

This was a "lesson learned" from the 1998 Mars Climate Orbiter, which was destroyed in the planet's atmosphere because controllers could not correct a navigation error until too late.

"The key thing about the orbit insertion burn is we have one shot at it, and it has to go right. If it doesn't go right, we just go right on past Mars and never get to go back," Jakosky said.

Meanwhile, the science team has been making sure MAVEN's hardware is ready to collect the data. One instrument has already gathered information on solar activity.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft represents the country's first Mars-bound probe.

Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation

In India, MOM spacecraft controllers have been priming the probe for its arrival at the Red Planet.

On Thursday (Aug. 7), flight controllers tested the MOM probe's antenna that will serve as its primary communications link to Earth.

"MOM successfully completed the characterization of its Medium Gain Antenna, which will be used for communicating with Earth during the critical Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI)," ISRO officials wrote in a MOM update on Facebook yesterday. "Only 14 percent of the journey remains in its heliocentric arc towards Mars Orbit Insertion."

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity nears mountain-base outcrop

This full-circle panorama of the landscape surrounding NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on July 31, 2014, offers a view into sandy lower terrain called "Hidden Valley," which is on the planned route ahead. 

It combines several images from Curiosity's Navigation Camera (NavCam). South is at the center. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

As it approaches the second anniversary of its landing on Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover is also approaching its first close look at bedrock that is part of Mount Sharp, the layered mountain in the middle of Mars' Gale Crater.

The mission made important discoveries during its first year by finding evidence of ancient lake and river environments.

During its second year, it has been driving toward long-term science destinations on lower slopes of Mount Sharp.

Those destinations are in an area beginning about 2 miles (3 kilometers) southwest of the rover's current location, but an appetizer outcrop of a base layer of the mountain lies much closer, less than one-third of a mile (500 meters) from Curiosity. The rover team is calling the outcrop "Pahrump Hills."

"We're coming to our first taste of a geological unit that's part of the base of the mountain rather than the floor of the crater," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We will cross a major terrain boundary."

For about half of July, the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, drove Curiosity across an area of hazardously sharp rocks called "Zabriskie Plateau."

Damage to Curiosity's aluminum wheels from driving across similar terrain last year prompted a change in route planning to skirt such rock-studded terrain wherever feasible.

The one-eighth mile (200 meters) across Zabriski Plateau was one of the longest stretches without a suitable detour on the redesigned route toward the long-term science destination.

The main map shows landforms near NASA's Curiosity Mars rover as the rover's second anniversary of landing on Mars nears. 

The gold traverse line ends at Curiosity's position as of July 31, 2014 (Sol 705).

The inset shows the entire traverse and the remaining distance to Murray Buttes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

"The wheels took some damage getting across Zabriskie Plateau, but it's less than I expected from the amount of hard, sharp rocks embedded there," said JPL's Jim Erickson, project manager for Curiosity.

"The rover drivers showed that they're up to the task of getting around the really bad rocks. There will still be rough patches ahead."

"We didn't imagine prior to landing that we would see this kind of challenge to the vehicle, but we're handling it."

Another recent challenge appeared last week in the form of unexpected behavior by an onboard computer currently serving as backup.

Curiosity carries duplicate main computers. It has been operating on its B-side computer since a problem with the A-side computer prompted the team to command a side swap in February 2013.

Work in subsequent weeks of 2013 restored availability of the A-side as a backup in case of B-side trouble.

Last week, fresh commanding of the rover was suspended for two days while engineers confirmed that the A-side computer remains reliable as a backup.

Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, 2012, EDT). During its first year of operations, it fulfilled its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

Clay-bearing sedimentary rocks on the crater floor in an area called Yellowknife Bay yielded evidence of a lakebed environment billions of years ago that offered fresh water, all of the key elemental ingredients for life, and a chemical source of energy for microbes, if any existed there.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project continues to use Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions.

The destinations on Mount Sharp offer a series of layers that recorded different chapters in the environmental evolution of early Mars.

SMOS launch nearing: Media Day at ESA/ESRIN

On Wednesday 21 October, media representatives will have the opportunity to attend an in-depth briefing at ESA’s ESRIN establishment in Frascati near Rome on the upcoming mission of SMOS, ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite scheduled for a Rockot launch from Plesetsk, Russia on 2 November at 02:50 CET.

ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes Volker Liebig, together with other European experts from participating space agencies and industry, will present the SMOS mission and its scientific objectives and will be available for interviews.
Following the successful launch of GOCE on 17 March, SMOS will be the European Space Agency’s second Earth Explorer satellite under its Living Planet Programme to go into orbit. After the successful launch in 2002 of Envisat, the largest Earth observation satellite ever built, ESA started developing the Earth Explorer series of missions to provide a moderate-cost, fast response to important scientific challenges using cutting-edge technologies.

SMOS will primarily observe soil moisture over the Earth's landmasses and salinity over the oceans. Soil-moisture data are urgently required for hydrological studies; ocean-salinity data are vital for improving our understanding of ocean circulation patterns. Data from SMOS will lead to a better understanding of the Earth's water cycle and to better weather and extreme-event forecasting and will contribute to seasonal-climate forecasting. As a secondary objective, SMOS will also provide observations over snow and ice regions, contributing to study of the cryosphere.

SMOS measurement principle
One innovative feature of this mission is that it will demonstrate a new measuring technique adopting a completely different approach to observing the Earth from space. The truly novel MIRAS payload instrument which has been developed is capable of observing both soil moisture and ocean salinity by capturing images of microwave radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface around a frequency of 1.4 GHz (L-band). SMOS will carry the first ever polar-orbiting, space-borne, 2D interferometric radiometer.