The Mission to Mars!
It's Just the Beginning!
NASA's Mars Exploration
Mars Exploration
NASA has sent many missions to Mars in order to research its hidden’ scientific secrets including its geology and evidence of possible life. Among those missions is the Mars Rover missions sent in 2003. In fact, two rovers were sent in the year 2003. On June 10 of 2003, the Spirit rover was launched on the Delta II rocket. In that same year, Spirit's twin, Opportunity was launched on July 7. Both rovers were designed to analyze Mar’s surface and the chemistry of the rocks around. It was programmed to look for life forms and break rocks down into simpler parts. These rovers are part of NASA’s long-term Mars Exploration Program to deploy robotic exploration of Mars’ martian surface. One of the scientific goals the rover missions are trying to accomplish is searching and characterizing a wide range of rocks which can show evidence of water and early life. The rover technology includes panoramic cameras which determine the mineralogy and the texture of Mars’ terrain, microscopic cameras for close-up, high-resolution images of rocks, and magnets to take samples of magnetic dust on the surface.
MAVEN
NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, MAVEN, was launched on November 18, 2013 and it reached Mars on the night of September 21, 2014. This mission was designed to analyze the Red planet’s surface in order to piece together its past and determine how it may have changed from a wet world into a dry planet. The 671 million dollar project will investigate Mars’ upper atmosphere, ionosphere and solar winds which allows it to focus on why and how the planet lost most of its atmosphere and liquid water. Scientists can use the data provided by MAVEN to understand its loss of volatile compounds and give insight into its climate and planetary habitability.
Rockets for Mars
Recently, SpaceX has been working on building heavy-lift and super heavy-lift technology to carry humans and equipment to Mars. A long-term goal of SpaceX is to create reusable rockets landing safely back on Earth. SpaceX has been developing powerful chamber engines including the Merlin engine, a powerful single-chamber engine used in the Falcon X and Falcon XX rockets. The evolution of the merlin engine has brought new powerful engines including the Raptor engine, a methane-fueled engine being implemented in new SpaceX designs. The raptor engine is a next generation combustion engine with a two stage cycle and it is more efficient than earlier Merlin engines used in the Falcon rockets. Instead of using liquid oxygen and kerosene as fuel, the Raptor uses oxygen and methane to reduce energy costs and increase efficiency as well as higher thrust. SpaceX has a vision of creating a large Mars transportation system to transport people and cargo. The MCT, the Mars Colonial Transporter, is being used as a space transportation and landing system to transport humans and cargo to Mars. This transporter is essentially a reusable shuttle that has a performance level of carrying 100 tons of cargo to Mars’ surface.
Mars' Conditions
Conditions on Mars are very rough, and there can be many challenges when it comes to staying on Mars for an extended period of time. The biggest challenge with living on Mars is the atmosphere, which is supposed to provide oxygen for organisms to survive and block out harmful rays from the sun. However, the atmosphere of Mars is 200 times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere. This shows the reason Mars does not have essential compounds including water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Another obstacle that people would have to face would be the climate of Mars. Powerful dust storms sweep the surface of the planet, which could pose problems for colonization on Mars. Additionally, temperatures on Mars average approximately -50 degrees Celsius. Harmful radiation is yet another problem. While it is not a problem over short periods of time, long-term exposure can lead to some serious health problems.
The World's Contribution
So far, 2020 is set to be a good year for Mars Exploration for many nations involved in extensive space exploration. The United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Europe, and Russia are scheduling to launch missions in the year 2020. There have been more than 40 missions in the past launched by many countries around the world. 2 missions are currently operating on Mars’ surface and 5 are orbiting Mars.
The United States
The only two working rovers on Mars are owned by NASA and 3 of the 5 orbiters are also owned by NASA. NASA is working towards developing many smaller missions to land landers in order to conduct scientific research on Mars’ surface. In 2018, NASA plans to have a smaller mission called the InSight lander. NASA also plans to launch the next Mars rover worth about 1.9 billion dollars which will leave Earth in 2020. One of the goals that are intended for the 2020 mission to execute is searching for an ancient Martian life of the surface of Mars. The new Mars rover is based on the designs of the Curiosity rover. The nuclear-powered rover will be equipped with a coring drill to take samples of rocks and ancient life. NASA also hopes to have this mission return back to Earth with all of the samples necessary for research.
Europe
The European space Agency, the ESA will also conduct space exploration on Mars. Their mission, ExoMars Phase 2 will include a rover which will conduct exobiology and geochemistry research on the surface of Mars. the rover will also include a Russian surface platform to conduct climate and atmospheric investigations.
India
The Indian Space Research Organization launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, the MOM, on November 5, 2013. This mission is designed to observe surface features including morphology and mineralogy, and it will also be conducting atmospheric tests. The orbiter will search for the existence of Methane in the atmosphere which will conclude the existence of martian life at one point.
China
Recently, China says that it hopes to send its first successful mission to mars. Many of its missions to mars were failures in the past, however, the Chinese space Program now says that it has all that it needs to send a mission to the red planet. Its mission includes two parts, a mars rover, and an orbiter to analyze atmospheric conditions.