NASA Mars satellite shifts course to avoid hitting planet's moon

A NASA science satellite orbiting Mars was forced to make a rare evasive maneuver to avoid a collision next week with one of the planet's two small moons, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday.

Flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, commanded the MAVEN spacecraft, which is studying Mars' vanishing atmosphere, to fire up its engine on Tuesday to boost its speed by about 1.3 feet per second (0.4 meters per second).

The acceleration was necessary to slightly shift MAVEN's orbit and steer the satellite clear of the Martian moon Phobos, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement.

Without the tweak, MAVEN and the small, lumpy moon would have reached the same point in space within seven seconds of one another next Monday, March 6. In its new orbit, MAVEN will miss Phobos by about 2-1/2 minutes, NASA said.

MAVEN is in an egg-shaped orbit that regularly crosses the paths of other science satellites and of Phobos, which circles just 6,000 miles (9,656 km) above the Martian surface, closer than any other known moon to a planet in the solar system. At that distance, Phobos whips around Mars three times a day.

Flight controllers regularly monitor MAVEN's path for potential collisions. Tuesday's evasive action was the first time MAVEN had to dodge the potato-shaped Phobos, which measures about 10 by 14 miles by 11 miles (16 by 22.5 by 18 km).

MAVEN, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, reached the red planet in September 2014.

Source: Reuters

SpaceX founder Elon Musk outlines plans to colonize Mars in 2022

Humans will be able to travel to Mars from the year 2022 on a spaceship carrying between 100 and 200 people every 26 months, entrepreneur Elon Musk announced at the 67th International Astronautical Congress meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Anyone with "a few days of training" can travel to the Red Planet for an estimated cost of between $100,000 and $200,000, depending on the luggage, the founder of aerospace firm SpaceX said Tuesday.

Source: EFE

China shows first images of Mars rover, aims for 2020 mission

China has showed off its first images of a rover it plans to sent to Mars in mid-2020, which is designed to explore the planet surface for three months, state media said, the latest aim of China's ambitious space program.

China in 2003 became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

It has touted its plans for moon exploration and in late 2013 completed the first lunar "soft landing" since 1976 with the Chang'e-3 craft and its Jade Rabbit rover.

China's latest manned space mission is due in October and is aiming for a manned moon landing by 2036.

State news agency Xinhua, in a report late on Tuesday, said the 200 kg (441 lb) rover would have six wheels and be powered by four solar panels, two more than the rover China shot to the moon and 60 kg (132 lb) heavier.

"The challenges we face are unprecedented," Zhang Rongqiao, chief architect of the Mars mission, said, according to Xinhua.

The probe would carry 13 payloads including a remote sensing camera and a ground penetrating radar, on what is expected to be a three-month exploration mission blasting off in July or August 2020, the report added.

"The lander will separate from the orbiter at the end of a journey of around seven months and touch down in a low latitude area in the northern hemisphere of Mars where the rover will explore the surface," it said.

The Beijing News added that the northern hemisphere was not as good a place to utilize solar power as the equator, but that the geographic conditions were better.

Advancing China's space program is a priority for Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.

China insists its program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it is pursuing activities aimed to prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.

Apart from its civilian ambitions, Beijing has tested anti-satellite missiles, and the U.S. Congress has banned NASA from engaging in cooperation with its Chinese counterpart due to security concerns.

Source: Reuters

Tim Peake drives remote robot on Earth from orbit

He had to command a robot rover on Earth, driving it across a big sandpit in Stevenage, near London, that simulated the surface of Mars.

The Briton experienced some software glitches, but achieved his objectives.

These involved finding a series of painted targets in a darkened room that had been set up to represent a cave on the Red Planet.

It was all part of a European Space Agency (Esa) project which aims to learn how astronauts can control remote systems on other worlds.

Known as Meteron (Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network), the programme has already seen Danish ISS crewman Andreas Mogensen get a robot on Earth to precisely place some pegs in a set of holes.

But Major Tim's job, which got under way at 15:00 BST (14:00 GMT), took things up a notch in terms of complexity.

One of his big obstacles was time. His control link had to transmit down to Earth, bounce through numerous communications nodes, before reaching the robot in its simulation "Mars yard" at the Airbus Defence and Space Company.

It meant every command - and all the feedback - had several seconds of associated delay. His link also had some drop-outs.

At one point, he hit a big rock, which required the intervention of local Airbus engineers to sort out; and then there were some software glitches on the laptops he was using in orbit.

But despite all this, Major Tim managed to race through his tasks, finding and mapping five targets in the cave.
These targets were boulders that had been painted to show up in the UV light shone from the rover's masthead.

The astronaut managed to get in and out of the cave within two hours.

"That was great driving," Esa's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, told the Briton. "Everyone on the ground is really proud of you. You succeeded to mark five targets . One was actually marked twice due to a software reboot."

Major Tim responded: "Thanks for everyone's help and support. It was an awful lot of work on everyone's behalf to get this up and running, but it was great to see and I'm really happy everything went so smoothly."

Both the US space agency rovers on the Red Planet today, and those planned in coming years, use a high level of autonomy. Once instructed to go to a location, the vehicles will sense their surroundings and compute the most efficient route. But it is a very slow process.

The scenario suggested by Friday's simulation is the possibility that we might one day have an astronaut in orbit above Mars who could assist a surface robot in investigating a location that engineers would normally try to avoid.

Going into a cave would be extremely risky. The lack of light would make it harder for the sensors on the autonomous navigation system to discern hazards. And with no sunlight falling on the robot's solar panels, the amount of energy available to operate in the cave might very quickly become an issue.

Having a human in the loop could help speed up decision-making, ensuring the rover completes its science investigations with enough time to get back outside the cave and start recharging its batteries.

Airbus DS is leading the development of the rover that Esa will send to Mars in 2018 or, more likely, in 2020. As part of this project, it uses a number of "breadboard" robots to test flight hardware and software.

For Friday's experiment, Major Tim was controlling the breadboard known as Bridget.

Source: BBC