Brawny Mars Robots Will Launch a New Wave of Exploration

The frozen death of the perky Mars Phoenix Lander as reported by my colleague Ian O’Neill makes me feel like I've lost a friend.

Through 2008 I had fun reporting on the lander’s achievements for Discovery News -- most notably the detection of water ice and perchlorates. Given these two findings, Martian microbes may have been literally inches beneath the lander’s feet.

Unlike the Antarctic expeditions of a century ago, it was only a machine that succumbed to a harsh polar winter, and not humans. But we can't resist anthropomorphizing these little explorers, like the Disney/Pixar character Wall-E. We all lamented when the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit that got stuck forever in a sand trap a few month ago and now seems like it's having a slow winter death.

Our only consolation is that future Mars robotic explorers will be ever more robust and longer lived.

Look Out Martian Cats

I’m eagerly awaiting NASA’s Volkswagen-sized Mars Science Lab, scheduled to launch between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18 of this year for an August 2012 landing. Its name Curiosity belies a tough little robot: nuclear-powered and toting a rock-vaporizing laser blaster. With a radioactive plutonium heart to keep it warm, the rover could last over a decade on the Red planet and not even get a sniffle when winter comes.

Curiosity will be lowered on tethers beneath a hovering retro-rocket-supported airframe called sky-crane. Unlike airbags which have landed previous Mars rovers, this will allow for a pinpoint touchdown rather than an unglamorous bouncing beach ball entrance onto the Red planet:

But where to land on a world with as much land area as all of Earth’s continents put together? Scientists want a place that is both scientifically challenging and safe. That's like putting speed bumps on a NASCAR track.

NASA's Odyssey spacecraft and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are scouting sites now in preparation for the 2012 landing. The eagle-eye photomaps are giving MSL planners exquisite views of ancient riverbeds, sedimentary layering, and chemical concentrations at candidate landing sites - not to mention lots of ground hazards.

The MSL doesn't carry exobiology experiments as the Viking landers did in 1975. But it will look for organic compounds and other chemical building blocks of life. It's not impossible that the MSL might stumble across biologically formed structures in old sedimentary deposits, perhaps like the 3.5 billion year old stromatolites found here on Earth.

Some of the finalist sites are in the heavily cratered highlands that once had springs, rivers or lakes. The rocks there date from a period in Martian history when liquid water was common at the surface. Conditions on Mars then were likely similar to those on the early Earth at the time when life began.

Holden Crater

This 100-mile diameter impact crater holds clay-bearing minerals once deposited by a gently flowing stream or lake. This geology is considered good at preserving any organic material.

Eberswalde Crater

This southern hemisphere crater has an ancient river delta inside of it. A river broke through the edge of the crater and deposited a series of sedimentary beds out into a lake where microbes may have once basked. But the rover would have to trudge across steep slopes, hills and rock fields to reach this treasure.

Mawrth Vallis

Because it is one of the oldest valleys in the Martian northern hemisphere, this region may have once had floodwater of Biblical proportions streaming though it and carving out steep gullies. The rover would land directly on clay materials that may have formed under the flows, or standing lake.

Gale Crater

This site is full of sulfates that were likely left over as liquid water evaporated on the Martian surface. It was recently reported that Haughton crater in the Canadian Arctic has sulfides apparently formed through microbial activity, permeating the rocks. But the rover would have to climb up a mysterious central peak to get to the region of interest.

The Bruce Willis Robot

Looking beyond Curiosity, NASA's Johnson and Ames Centers, Stanford University, and Boeing are developing a true bruiser of a rover for Mars (originally for the moon). Called ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) the six-legged spidery contraption can walk over extremely rough or steep terrain.

The hexagonal machine towers about 10 feet off the ground with legs fully extended. It can step over a 10-foot wall.

ATHLETE would be a space age mule capable of carting payloads of more than 14.5 tons across the Martian surface. it could load, transport, manipulate, and deposit science equipment to interesting sites.

Two or three ATHLETE vehicles could set up a human habitat shipped on ahead of a Mars landing party. The husky robots would assemble base camp by using tools like grippers, drills and scoops stored in their individual holsters. It would look like a scene out of Star Wars’ Mos Eisley spaceport.

NASA expects ATHLETE to be ready for a robotic engineering mission to Mars by 2015.

Just imagine if Antarctic explorers like Scott and Amundsen had this kind of logistics support on their expeditions.

History will record that our curiosity and ingenuity drove us to explore Mars with fragile of machines that in hindsight were the space age equivalent of the ancient Polynesian rafts and hollowed out canoes. but the robotic invasion of Mars is just getting into full swing.

---

Email:

---