The Curiosity rover is the most advanced vehicle to date ever launched by our civilization to Mars.
But there were earlier models, some of them are still exploring the expanses of the red planet!
The history of humanity's acquaintance with Mars, with the help of man-made vehicles, began in the 1960s. The first vehicles launched to Mars by two superpowers - the USA and the USSR, were far from perfect, as was the experience of the specialists who created them. For this reason, the first successful vehicle to land on the surface of the planet is “ Viking-1" Consisting of an artificial satellite and a “Mars-bound apparatus”.
Civilization is only at the beginning of the path of studying the objects of the universe. Even the planets of the solar system, not to mention the more distant ones, are still little studied. But we managed to achieve very, very much compared to the knowledge about space that was only some 50-100 years ago.
Mars rovers.
Viking1 - launched by NASA on August 20, 1975. And on July 20, 1976, the device successfully landed on the red planet and transmitted the first images of its surface to Earth.
As you can see, the device partially filmed itself.
And here is a panorama of Mars made by the same Viking1.
The Viking1 artificial satellite served until August 7, 1980. And the device that landed on the surface worked until November 11, 1982. When, due to an error by the operator rebooting the system, the device stopped responding to signals from the Earth. Since then, as can be seen, it remains on the surface of the planet. It’s good that at least the device has good company from other Mars rovers, operating or not.
For example: two Soviet landers: Mars 2 and Mars 3.
The first of which was damaged during primordium (November 27, 1971). And the second one made a successful landing, but lost the signal 14 seconds after this event (December 2, 1971).
The Soviet project, in addition to these two devices, also contained artificial satellite- Mars.
In addition, we almost forgot to mention Viking2! This device landed on the planet almost at the same time as Viking1. Only on the other side of the planet. Let's hope they can communicate with each other.
If, due to a fairly decent distance from each other, it is difficult for stationary devices to do this, then the functions of a messenger between them could be performed by an American Mars rover Sojourner.
He landed on the red planet on July 4, 1997 and already lost contact with Earth on September 27 of the same year. The whole point was that: the rover communicated through an additional module and as a result of which, when it failed, a completely serviceable and completely new device was unable to transmit and receive commands from Earth...
Next after him Mars rover Spirit- made a successful landing on January 4, 2004. This Mars rover worked efficiently and for a long time. Much longer than originally planned. Due to the constant, natural cleaning of its solar panels by the Martian wind. But in March 2009, it stalled tightly in a sandy valley, and on March 22, 2010, the last communication session with the Earth occurred.
Almost at the same time as Spirit, another device landed on Mars, Mars rover Opportunity. This happened on January 25, 2004. By the way, the name of the device was given by a 9-year-old girl, Sophie Collies, who was born in Russia and was adopted by an American family.
She probably has a light hand, since the device is still working to this day (March 5, 2014). Now, just not to jinx it...
This rover is the only fully functioning sibling of today's most extreme rover, Curiosity.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012. And since then he has continued to roam the expanses of the red planet together with Opportunity.
Curiosity justified the costs of American taxpayers, perhaps more than all other devices did. He managed to find out that: In ancient times there was water on Mars, find river beds, discover hydrocarbons, find out that the atmosphere of the planet was once almost identical to the earth’s and ultimately lead some scientists to the idea that life on our planet is partially or completely could have come from Mars, which, due to its small size, lost its entire atmosphere and magnetic field, as a result of which life similar to earthly life became impossible on it. If, of course, it really once existed. This question remains open for now.
Today, NASA is interested in the possibility of a manned flight to Mars in the fairly near future. But this is not so easy to do, because the modern Martian climate is completely contraindicated for earthlings. But despite this, a project is also being developed to build scientific stations on Mars! Perhaps both events will occur in the first half of the 21st century.
The main task of the completely new rover currently being developed, under the working title MSL-2020, may be to prepare for this event. The MSL 2020 event is scheduled for 2020.
And another NASA rover, the Mars Sample Return Mission, could be sent to the red planet in 2022. Its main tasks are essentially the same as for MSL-2020.
So, who would like to go to Mars in the near future to have fun and usefully spend their free time there?
It’s interesting that: At the moment, it is being created Russian rover Mars-Aster- the launch of which is planned for 2018. I wonder if it will be able to surpass American devices in anything? Time will show.
This is a device, usually mobile, designed to study the surface and features of Mars. Mars is the closest planet to Earth solar system and more similar than others to Earth in the distant past. At the moment, the Curiosity rover is working on Mars, one of the main goals of which is to find out whether there was life on Mars in the distant past and could it exist there in principle? Mars is one of the most suitable candidates for terraforming and by 2020 NASA plans to launch another rover that will provide scientists with even more data about the Red Planet.
04/12/2019, Ramis Ganiev 2
The Mars rover has been roaming the expanses of the Red Planet since 2012, and during this time has helped the NASA space agency make many scientific discoveries. Already 100 days after the start of the mission, the device proved that the planet consists of two parts, and the lower part can have a fairly large concentration of water. Most recently, on April 6, he drilled a hole in a small clay area and took soil samples to look for mineral particles. The space agency told how it all happened and shared a photo.
“Our traces will remain on the dusty paths of distant planets,” a Soviet song sang. And so it happened. Let's take Mars, for example: the paths on it are really dusty: the atmosphere there, of course, is less dense than on Earth, but the force of gravity is four times less, and the movement of rarefied gases easily raises dust columns above the surface of Mars, and sometimes global (then There are dust storms all over the planet. The longest one on record lasted from September 1971 to January 1972, that is, almost half an Earth year. Here's what dust devils look like, captured by the Curiosity rover.
The paths are dusty, and human traces are in in a broad sense- on Mars there is. Now there are about two dozen man-made devices there: three Soviet devices, nine American, one British and “Schiaparelli”, built by specialists of the European Space Agency with the participation of Russian scientists, and orbital stations that have left orbit: not all of them are known where they are now, therefore, it is impossible to name the exact number of artificial vehicles that are now being swept up by Martian sand.
Mars-1 and Mars-2: the first, but unsuccessful
The first were the Soviets. In 1971, two automatic interplanetary stations (AIS) Mars-2 and Mars-3 reached the surface of the Red Planet. Each carried a small ProOP-M rover - a box on skids, attached to a stationary module with a 15-meter cable: ProOPs were supposed to provide the first photographs of the surface of a distant planet taken on the spot.
Both were unlucky: they landed in the midst of that most terrible, global dust storm, in November and December 1971. Mars 2 crashed during landing, Mars 3 landed without damage, and it was a victory: the first successful soft landing on the surface of Mars in history. The station even began transmitting a television signal to Earth, but after 14.5 seconds it stopped and no longer communicated. What happened is still unclear. However, the mission was not a complete failure: firstly, then scientists received the first image of the Martian surface - like this:
And secondly, in addition to the landing module, there was an orbital station, and it honestly worked from December to August, transmitting measurement results to Earth magnetic field, atmospheric composition, photo and IR radiometry.
Soviet rovers failed to leave a mark on Mars. It would look unusual: if the ProOPs had gone, they would have left behind them not a track, but a ski track. In the early seventies, they knew nothing at all about what the surface of Mars looked like, and soviet engineers They suggested an option with “skis” - in case Mars is snow fields or endless sands.
First successes, Viking mission
The first fully successful mission to Mars was the orbital station-lander pairs of the American Viking mission. The first Viking successfully descended to the surface and operated for more than six years. Viking would have continued to work if not for an operator error when updating the program: the device went silent forever in 1982. The second Viking lasted four years while the batteries worked. The Vikings took and sent back to Earth the first photographs of Mars, including panoramic and color ones.
Black-and-white panorama of Mars captured by Viking II
Sojourner: first rider
Since then, Mars has not been visited until the Delta II launch vehicle lifted off in 1996 with the Mars Pathfinder mission - a lander later named after Carl Sagan, and the Sojourner rover.
Sojourner did an excellent job: it was designed for 7 sols (Martian days), but worked for more than 80, traveled 100 meters on the surface, sent back to Earth many photographs of the surface of Mars and spectrometry results.
NASA's first failures: Mars Surveyor 98
This program was charged big hopes: two AWSs - Mars Climate Orbiter for studying Mars from orbit and the Mars Polar Lander landing vehicle. Afterwards they decided that it was not atmospheric disturbances or operator errors that were to blame for the accident of both devices, but a lack of money and haste. On the descent module, Deep Space 2 penetrator probes flew to Mars, which were supposed to gain speed, enter the surface of the planet and transmit data on the composition of the soil to Earth.
Beagle's Failure
In 2003, the British sent a device to Mars: the Beagle 2 landing module, named in memory of Charles Darwin's ship, was supposed to look for traces of life on Mars. the mission ended in failure; communication with the device was lost during landing. Only in 2015, the Beagle was found in photographs and the cause of the accident was understood: the solar panels of the device had not deployed.
Success story: Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity
The story of NASA's Martian triumph begins in 2004. One after another, four vehicles land on Mars, three rovers - Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and the Phoenix automatic station - the first and so far the only one in the Martian circumpolar region. Opportunity and Curiosity are still running. The Martian wind that destroyed the first Soviet probes has turned into a helpful assistant: it blows away dust and sand from Opportunity's solar panels.
Three successful NASA rovers (models): Sojourner, Opportunity, Curiosity
Opportunity proved that Mars once had water, and fresh water at that, and Curiosity's list of accomplishments is too extensive to list here. The largest and heaviest vehicle ever to land on the Red Planet, Curiosity is huge compared to the first Soviet rovers, which were no bigger than a microwave. There are great hopes for Curiosity: in the time remaining to it, the device should tell scientists everything they need to know in order to send people to Mars. The rover determines the composition of soils, measures background radiation; he is a geologist, a climatologist, and a bit of a biologist - at least he is looking for evidence in the soil and atmosphere that processes that are characteristic of life as we know it on Earth can or could occur on Mars.
The latest guests on Mars and in the surrounding area are the vehicles of the Russian-European ExoMars mission. The first part of the mission, implemented last year, consisted of an orbital and descent blocks. The orbital successfully took its place in orbit, and the Schiaparelli lander crashed, having, however, managed to send the last message - the results of measurements and parameters of its systems. In 2020, the second part of the mission will head to Mars - a lander and a rover. Their design will take into account the disadvantages that led to the Schiaparelli accident, so they seem to have a greater chance of flying.
The joint Russian-European project ExoMars is preparing for its main mission - searching for traces of past and present life on the Red Planet. The European Space Agency will produce the transfer module and the rover, and Russia will produce the landing module and landing platform. The Russian Proton-M launch vehicle will launch all this into space.
Launching as planned on July 25, 2020, the station will have to reach its goal on March 19, 2021. One of the main conditions for a soft landing on the surface of Mars will be the protective screen of the landing module made of a special composite produced by ONPP Tekhnologiya, part of Rostec.
Martian Chronicles: project history
ExoMars is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos to study Mars, its surface, atmosphere and climate from orbit and on the surface of the planet.
Since the early 2000s, ExoMars has been developed as a joint project between ESA and NASA. It was assumed that the Americans would provide two Atlas rockets for launching the two missions, and would also participate in the development of the Mars rover. However, in 2013, NASA ended its participation in the project due to budget cuts. Roscosmos took NASA's place. As part of the project, the Russian side will develop a landing module with a landing platform, and the European side will develop a transfer module and a Mars rover.
Graphics: JSC NPO Lavochkina
It is believed that the main scientific mission of the ExoMars project is to search for signs of life on Mars in the past and present. But this is not the only mystery of the Red Planet that ExoMars will have to solve. The project also aims to study the aquatic/geochemical environment both on the surface and in the interior of the planet. As you know, water on Mars is no longer a myth. Its presence was first announced about twenty years ago. During all this time, the water on Mars was studied from the surface and mapped. And in July last year, the first permanent body of water was named: the MARSIS radar discovered a lake on Mars at a depth of 1.5 km under the ice of the South Polar Cap.
Today, a no less important mystery has emerged - Martian methane. Scientists first reported methane on Mars in 2003. This gas was discovered in negligibly small concentrations, and the total volume of the release corresponded to 42 thousand tons of gas. For comparison, this is about a third of the average gas tanker.
In 2012, the American rover Curiosity conducted its first studies and found that there is no methane on Mars. But about a year later, Curiosity again detected the presence of methane in Gale Crater. So the study of methane, as well as other gaseous impurities and their sources in the atmosphere of the Red Planet is also one of the key missions of ExoMars.
The first stage of the ExoMars program began in 2016 precisely with the goal of solving the methane puzzle. Then the ExoMars-2016 station was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It consisted of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) science orbiter and the Schiaparelli lander demonstrator. The Schiaparelli device was supposed to test the technology of entering the atmosphere, descending and landing on the surface of the planet before launching the second stage of the mission, but failed to successfully make a soft landing and crashed.
TGO in April 2018 began implementing its scientific program, successfully transmits images of the Red Planet and is now awaiting its main mission - to begin functioning as a relay station for the rover and an automatic scientific station as part of the second stage of ExoMars.
Stage two: rover and station on Mars
The launch of the second stage of ExoMars was originally planned for 2018, but then the launch was postponed for two years. This stage is considered the main one in the project and is intended to help find the answer to the question of whether there is life on Mars.
As part of the second mission, it is planned to use a transfer module developed by ESA to deliver a Russian landing platform and a European rover to Mars. The transfer module ensures flight along the Earth-Mars route and the entry of the landing module into the planet’s atmosphere at a speed of approximately 5800 m/s. The landing module performs braking in the atmosphere and descent to the surface of Mars of the landing module as part of the landing platform and rover.
Infographics: Roscosmos
The Russian landing module will be protected when entering the Martian atmosphere by a special screen made of a “space” composite - a light and durable material called fiberglass. This material can withstand strong vibration and extreme temperatures and is lightweight. The protective screen is produced at the Rostec enterprise - ONPP "Technology". “The protective screen has a rather complex design, it is a kind of multi-layer cake, which alternates with layers of carbon fiber and honeycomb core, and in the future it is also covered with thermal protection,” says Anatoly Sviridov, director of NPK Composite, ORPP Tekhnologiya.
Photo: JSC NPO Lavochkina
The company says that work on the ExoMars-2020 project is going according to plan. Large-sized structures made of polymer composite materials have been developed for the landing module and landing platform. In total, the program provides for the creation of four sets - three for testing and a “flight” copy.
In addition, 62 thermal control panels and solar cell frames have already been manufactured, including 12 frames and six thermal control panels, which are necessary for the functioning of the landing platform on the surface of Mars after the rover leaves.
Mars rover of the ExoMars-2020 project. Source: ESA
The six-wheeled European rover, weighing about 350 kg, is designed to operate on Mars for seven Earth months. It can walk up to 100 m per day and must travel several kilometers during this time. This rover will be the first to search for molecular biological signatures in the subsurface of the Red Planet.
After the rover leaves the Mars, the Russian landing platform weighing 828 kg will begin to operate as a long-lived autonomous research station. It is planned that it will work on Mars for about a year. A complex of scientific equipment will be installed on board to study the composition and properties of the planet’s surface. A total of 13 scientific instruments will be installed, including two European ones - LARA (radio experiment for research internal structure Mars) and HABIT (experiment to search for potentially habitable zones, liquid water, UV radiation and temperature studies).
Arrival point and time: Mars, March 19, 2021
In the first months of 2019, the final assembly of the automatic interplanetary station ExoMars-2020 will begin. The launch will take place from July 25 to August 13, 2020 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton-M rocket. Arrival on Mars will occur on March 19, 2021, said the head of the Roscosmos state corporation Dmitry Rogozin in September last year.
Since 2014, proposals for a landing site have been discussed. There were initially four candidate areas: the Oxia Plain, the Mavrta Valley, the Arama Range and the Hypanis Plain. Finally, in November 2018, the International working group The Landing Site Selection Working Group, or LSSWG, recommended the Oxia Plain for landing the ExoMars 2020 mission.
Oxia Planum. Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Oxia Planitia is located near the equator in the northern hemisphere of Mars near the border of high mountain regions and lowlands. According to available data, there are not many large impact craters here, but there are quite a lot of dry channels. Thus, traces of the action of water in the geological past should be visible.
The landing area is an ellipse of 120x19 km inside a shallow crater. Here rocks enriched in iron and magnesium come to the surface. Above them lies a layer of dark material, possibly of volcanic origin. That is, the landscape is quite diverse, and the rover will be able to explore various formations near the landing site. In addition, all landing safety requirements are met. There are no significant elevations inside the landing ellipse, and the area is fairly low and level.
Mars Exploration Rover is a famous NASA program aimed at comprehensive exploration of the planet Mars. As part of this program, two rovers – Spirit and Opportunity – were delivered almost simultaneously to the surface of the “red planet”. In 2012, due to the failure of the Spirit apparatus and the formulation of new scientific tasks, NASA delivered to the surface of the planet a new generation rover, Curiosity, which is noticeably larger and heavier than its predecessors.
First steps on planet Mars: Spirit and Opportunity
The Spirit rover landed on the surface of Mars on January 3, 2004. Opportunity joined him on January 25 of the same year. As for the third world-famous rover, Curiosity, it reached the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012, and immediately began work.
It must be said that Spirit has accomplished a number of interesting discoveries. In particular, based on the results of samples of Martian soil taken by this device, scientists were able to hypothesize that in the past there were excellent conditions for the life of microorganisms on Mars. Despite the fact that the mission of this rover was supposed to last 90 days, it was used for over six years. Communication with Spirit was interrupted on July 23, 2010.
Opportunity, which arrived three weeks later than Spirit, is still working. It should be noted that it was Opportunity that was able to find traces of an entire dry ocean on Mars. In addition, he has very accurate measurements of various parameters of the Martian atmosphere.
Curiosity Mars Exploration
The Curiosity rover is not just an excellent new generation Martian rover, but also a fairly large autonomous chemical laboratory. The main task of using this device is to conduct a number of in-depth studies of soil and atmosphere. The rover is currently studying the geological history of the “red planet” in Gale Crater, where it is possible to work with deep soils.
The Mars rover, which weighs 900 kg on Earth, is 3 meters long and 2.7 meters wide, has 3 pairs of wheels with a diameter of 50 cm, is capable of moving in any direction and transmitting data on soil samples, images from the surface of the planet and other valuable information to Earth. The expected mission time is 1 Martian year, which is equal to 687 Earth days.
The first goal after landing, which NASA Curiosity safely completed on August 6 this year in the 150 km diameter Gale Crater, was a journey to the foot of Mount Sharp. The mountain itself has a height of 5.5 km. The goal is to study the version of the impact of water flows that once exposed the slopes of Mount Sharp, but at the moment the rover at the landing site did not find as much water as expected by calculations, only 1.5%. But they assumed its presence from 5.6 to 6.5%.
The main results of Curiosity's work are that it determined the two-layer nature of the Martian soil. The first, so-called dry layer, contains practically no water. At the same time, at a depth of over 40 cm, the water content is about 4%.
And now, using superimposed filters, we have obtained high-quality images from Mars, which were transmitted by the Curiosity rover. One of the images shows the foot of Mount Sharp, which Curiosity is heading towards.
Nevertheless, the first real chronicle data from Mars has been received. The ambient air temperature is +3 degrees Celsius and several interesting photographs, one of which clearly shows Mount Sharp towards which the rover is moving. True, he will reach it only by the new year on earth, because his speed is very low, only 0.14 km/h.
(Video of the surface of the planet Mars transmitted by the Curiosity rover)
Before heading to the mountain, NASA's Curiosity rover checked all the equipment, took many pictures, moved the drill and tested a laser gun, the purpose of which is not to protect against Martians, but to collect analysis of soil and air samples at a distance.
Currently, of the three rovers launched since 2003, two are operating on Mars. During this time, many scientific discoveries of various scales were made.
Leading world experts believe that the basis for the success of American Mars rovers is the ability of their creators to learn from their own mistakes. Accordingly, each new device becomes more advanced than its predecessors.
Interesting fact. Nasa employees have provided an option for getting to know the “Martians” for the first time. So after landing, the first thing the rover did was greet the desert planet in the voice of NASA Director Charles Bolden and send the song Will.I.Am to earth.