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| Nasa plans to send a facelift of Ol' Curiosity, shown here by Nasa driver Erisa Hines, to Mars. |
THE ultimate offroad vehicle is out of this world — literally.
It is a Mars rover called Curiosity — Nasa’s car-sized,
six-wheeled, one-ton radioisotope-powered exploratory vehicle that has been
analysing the red planet since August 2012.
Nasa said it is now building a face-lift model to join the ageing
Mars Rover in February 2021.
The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the
ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the
Martian rocks for evidence of past life.
Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of soil and
rock and cache them on the surface for potential return to Earth by a future
mission.
“The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission
campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and
soil to Earth,” said Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator of Nasa’s
Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
“This mission marks a significant milestone in Nasa’s Journey to
Mars — to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our
goal of sending humans to the Red Planet,” he said.
To reduce risk and provide cost savings, the 2020 rover will look
much like its predecessor, Curiosity, but with an array of new science
instruments and enhancements to explore Mars as never before.
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| The new March Rover. (Nasa) |
The new Mars 2020 (above) rover will use the same sky crane landing system as
Curiosity, but will have the ability to land in more challenging terrain with
two enhancements, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing
candidates.
Terrain-relative navigation on the new rover will use onboard
analysis of downward-looking images taken during descent, matching them to a map
that indicates zones designated unsafe for landing.
