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Really excited about this one. It’s a sample cacher, so is the beginning of the sample return effort. It also has an in situ resource utilization demonstration
by Robotbeat 6y ago
Really excited about this one. It’s a sample cacher, so is the beginning of the sample return effort. It also has an in situ resource utilization demonstration involving capturing CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and splitting it into oxygen (and carbon monoxide fuel) using a solid oxide electrolysis cell. That kind of tech is critical for human missions.
And, of course, the helicopter!
- sandworm101 6y ago>> And, of course, the helicopter! It is cool, but is being falsely reported as the "first extraterrestrial aircraft", which it certainly is not. The Russian Vega mission had aircraft (balloons are aircraft) flying on Venus back in the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon
- madarco 6y agoThat's cool! Why NASA didn't opt for a balloon too for this mission?
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoBecause they wanted to test a helicopter
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoAnd because anything that can float on the light martian atmosphere can be blown away by the light martian wind.
- zbrozek 6y agoMars's atmosphere is very low density, so the balloon would have to be unreasonably enormous to fly anything useful. Venus, on the other hand, has an extraordinarily dense atmosphere. So dense that folks have hypothesized floating entire cities.
- lostgame 6y agoIs this fact the inspiration behind the floating city in Star Wars V? (Serious question)
- sandworm101 6y agoThe inspiration was the gas giants, planets with no practical surface on which to land.
- Robotbeat 6y agoBecause the atmosphere on Mars is orders of magnitude thinner (depending on altitude), making balloons a bigger challenge (and less useful in some ways).
- ajuc 6y agoVenus atmosphere is so thick light beach balls pumped with regular Earth's air would floating in it. Mars atmosphere is so thin it's almost impossible to make a ballon float in it.
- Robotbeat 6y agoYes, well aware of the Soviet Venus missions, including balloons. NASA is promoting it as the first extraterrestrial powered aircraft. Analogous to the Wright Brothers.
- sandworm101 6y agoSo "aircraft" is narrowed to the subset powered + heavier-than-air aircraft. But there too I would argue with NASA. NASA itself has already flown a heavier than air powered aircraft on mars! They landed the Curiosity rover using a rocket-powered "sky crane". That device was a powered aircraft. It controlled the decent of the rover, delivered it gently onto the ground, and executed an escape maneuver. That was a heavier-than-air, powered, aircraft flying/navigating/performing tasks, over Mars, in 2012. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/30jul_skycrane/ https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/3... At most, I'll give NASA that this is the first extraterrestrial rotary winged aircraft, the first helicopter.
- Robotbeat 6y agoNo, I meant that NASA stipulated that it was the first powered flight, a nod to the Venus mission as being the first extraterrestrial (unpowered) flight.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Klinky 6y agoI would call this the first "fully-functional" or "multi-mission" aircraft. Vega was a balloon with no controls. Curiosity descent stage was a spacecraft that performed landing maneuvers. Both of these crashed into the surface as part of their mission goals. They barely could qualify as aircraft, and only in the sense that they floated in air briefly before crashing. Neither could be used for multiple missions or actually take off and land under their own power.
- sandworm101 6y ago
- billfruit 6y agoI think there is more reason to be excited about the microphones it is reportedly carrying than the helicopter, if it works it would be the first time we would hear the sounds of the wind in Mars.
- netcraft 6y agothe insight lander used its seismometer and air pressure sensors to convert the sound of the wind into audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT50Q_Zbf3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT50Q_Zbf3s - not exactly the same, but thought you might be interested if you hadn't seen it.
- sixothree 6y agoThanks for sharing.
- shorts_theory 6y agoHow will the probe return the Martian samples? Is there going to be a round-trip mission to Mars in the future which will be able to take these samples back with it?
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoNo, leaving them in place for possible future mission
- shadowgovt 6y agoThat's neat, but I can't help but wonder how it's more cost-effective than having the possible future mission reach a scoop out once it gets there and collect its own samples. "Hi Mars Recon 1! I'm Mars Perseverance! I brought you some decades-old rocks and dirt!" "Uh, thanks Perseverance. I, uh, might get my own though." ;)
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoYou only need to send something optimized to pick something up and launch it. You don't need to send the digging gear/packaging gear that this Rover was going to use anyway
- jessriedel 6y agoDigging and packing gear has been demonstrated many times, and sounds way less risky and complicated than robotic rendezvous and transfer on a planet's surface, which I believe has never been done. Moreover, why not just make the digging mission and sample-return mission the same mission? Like, was it really the case that (1) the current digging mission could not be delayed AND (2) there is little independent value for a later new digging mission AND (3) it is easier to rendezvous and transfer than just re-dig?
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoI defer the decisions made by hundreds of scientists to the HN armchair general