Russia Plans Moon Base, Mars Network by 2030

Russia programs to deliver probes to Jupiter and Venus, area a system of unmanned channels on Mars and boat European cosmonauts to the exterior of the Celestial satellite — all by 2030. Which is according to a released papers from the nation's place organization.


The cosmically committed programs were presented to the govt by the European Government Area Agency (Roscosmos) this 30 days, according to a review in the Kommersant, Russia’s business-focused day-to-day paper.

The papers sits out a strategy for the nation's place market to go by in the next 18 years, up to 2030. It’s unusual for Italy to set a timeline for its upcoming place programs.

By 2020, the six-seater Angara explode will substitute the Soyuz as the spacecraft of option for establishing European payloads. It will release from the new Vostochny cosmodrome in the eastern of Italy, which will substitute the aged Baikonur ability. Development on Vostochny began this year, and is planned for achievement in 2018.

By 2030, Italy will deliver spiders to the Celestial satellite to gather examples. The system will be punctuated with a operated Celestial satellite getting — 60 years after Neil Armstrong’s Apollo objective. Benefit, perhaps, for dropping out on the significant leg of the U.S. and Communist place competition.

The positive system also sits out programs for dynamic discovery of other planet's in the solar system, and thoughts for a follow-up to the Worldwide Area Station: The ISS is only financed until 2020.

Prime Reverend Vladmir Putin has made his thoughts about place discovery obvious. Discussing this year on the Fiftieth wedding birthday of Yuri Gagarin’s ancient journey, Putin said “Russia should not restrict itself to the part of a worldwide place ferryman. We need to improve our existence on the international place market.”

Russia’s lavish programs come at the end of a hopeless era of space-related breakdowns. Its Mars-bound probe Phobos-Grunt had an almost immediate website failing after release, trapped around in orbit for a few several weeks and gone down back down to World. It was the newest slip-up in two years of unsuccessful tasks to Mars.

Underfunding doomed Russian Mars probe

Mars has claimed many a spacecraft as victim, and the latest one, a Russian space probe, looks likely to tumble to Earth very soon.

Russia's Phobos-Grunt ("grunt" is Russian for ground or soil) mission aimed for a first landing of a probe on the Martian moon Phobos. Launched Nov. 8, the spacecraft reached Earth orbit but failed to fire the rocket that would send it on an eight-month interplanetary trip to Mars. It's likely to fall to Earth around Jan. 15, the Russian Defense Ministry concluded, the victim of a steadily dropping orbit.

"Way too ambitious and way too underfunded to reach its goal," space law attorney Michael Listner says.

The $163 million spacecraft carried a piggybacked Chinese Mars orbiter added late to the mission.

After weeks of attempts to re-establish radio communication by European Space Agency and NASA transmitters and fleeting hints of contact, Russian space agency officials declared the craft a loss last month.

Mars has claimed overly thrifty probes before. NASA's Mars Polar Lander, a $120 million spacecraft, was judged about 30% underfunded by an accident panel after its calamitous crash in 1999. Testing shortfalls probably played a role in the craft's landing rockets malfunctioning.

"The Phobos science team would like to repeat the mission using experience that we got working on this mission," said an e-mail from mission scientist Alexander Zakharov of the Space Research Institute in Moscow

Read More: http://www.usatoday.com

Russian scientist apologizes for failed Mars moon mission

In an open letter Thursday, a prominent Russian scientist lamented the failure of the country's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was meant to collect samples from Mars' moon Phobos, but instead is languishing in Earth orbit.

"We are deeply sorry about the failure" of Phobos-Grunt, wrote Lev Zelenyi, director of the Space Research Institute and Chair of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Solar System Exploration Board, in a letter to fellow scientists and mission team members. "We hope in (the) future to continue our collaboration on space science projects."

The troubled spacecraft has been stranded since its Nov. 8 launch, when it failed to propel itself off into a deep space trajectory toward Mars.

Not giving up
In yesterday's message, Zelenyi said the reason for the failure has yet to be determined. He saluted the dedicated efforts of the European Space Agency, NASA, as well as the U.S. military space trackers and amateur skywatchers that helped in efforts to establish communication with the wayward probe and to assist in determining the exact orbit, orientation and attitude of Phobos-Grunt.

"However, despite people being at work 24/7 since the launch, all these attempts have not yield(ed) any satisfactory results," Zelenyi said. "Lavochkin Association specialists will continue their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send commands until the very end of its existence."

Russia's NPO Lavochkin was the main contractor of the Phobos-Grunt project.

The spacecraft is expected to enter Earth's atmosphere in early January as a piece of space debris. Zelenyi explained that Russian space experts are now working on the issue of re-entry and the "probability of where and which fragments may hit the ground (if any)," he said.

Source : http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Russia Mars probe failure underlined by successful U.S. launch

As the NASA rover Curiosity, launched from Cape Canaveral, streaks toward Mars, Russia's Phobos-Ground probe is marooned in near-Earth orbit and largely unresponsive to ground controllers' commands As the NASA rover Curiosity, launched Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., streaks toward Mars, Russia's Phobos-Ground probe is marooned in near-Earth orbit and largely unresponsive to commands from ground controllers.

Russian officials acknowledge that the narrow ballistic window for the spacecraft to reach Mars has closed, making it another in a series of failures for the country's space research. Since the retirement of the last space shuttle in July, U.S. astronauts heading to the International Space Station need to hitch a ride with the Russians, but officials say Russia's space program is suffering from worn-out equipment, a graying workforce and inability to attract a new generation of young specialists The $167-million probe, launched Nov. 9, was intended as a major step back into exploration of the deeper cosmos by Russia's proud space program. It was to land on the Martian moon Phobos next year, pick up samples of dust and deliver them back to Earth.

After the probe separated from its main booster rocket, however, its engines failed to fire properly to set it on a path toward Mars, and it didn't respond to signals from ground control.

Source: http://www.latimes.com

NASA Launches Super-Size Mars Rover to Red Planet

The world's biggest extraterrestrial explorer, NASA's Curiosity rover, rocketed toward Mars on Saturday on a search for evidence that the red planet might once have been home to itsy-bitsy life It will take 8 1/2 months for Curiosity to reach Mars following a journey of 354 million miles.

An unmanned Atlas V rocket hoisted the rover, officially known as Mars Science Laboratory, into a cloudy late morning sky. A Mars frenzy gripped the launch site, with more than 13,000 guests jamming the space center for NASA's first launch to Earth's next-door neighbor in four years, and the first send-off of a Martian rover in eight years NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, had a shirt custom made for the occasion. Her bright blue, short-sleeve blouse was emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words, "Next stop Mars!"

The 1-ton Curiosity -- as large as a car -- is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and analyze them right on the spot There's a drill as well as a stone-zapping laser machine It's "really a rover on steroids," said NASA's Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science. "It's an order of magnitude more capable than anything we have ever launched to any planet in the solar system." The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time -- or might even still be conducive to life now.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/

Scientists simulate Moon and Mars exploration

NASA and a team of international researchers from Mars Institute and SETI Institute returned to the Mojave Desert this month to complete a series of field tests and simulations aimed at investigating how humans will conduct geotechnical surveys on the moon or Mars the Mojave's inhospitable, sun-scorched environment presents scientists with perfect opportunities to study locations that are similar to what explorers would find on the moon or Mars. Other research partners include Carnegie Mellon University and aerospace companies Hamilton Sundstrand, Windsor Locks, Conn., and Honeybee Robotics, Pasadena, Calif.

The Mojave simulations were designed to study how an astronaut crew would characterize the geotechnical properties of a site, such as the composition and density of surface materials, their water content and roughness of the terrain. As part of the characterization of the sites by human explorers, soil samples were collected for microbiological analysis. The soil samples will be examined in the laboratory for their microbial content to better understand the astrobiological potential offered by similar environments on Mars.

“Our overall goal was to learn how to scientifically explore and validate, as civil engineers would, open areas on the moon and Mars that might be candidate sites for an outpost or other elements of surface infrastructure,” explained Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute and leader of the field campaign.

India Map

Russia back in 'Space Race' with Mars moon lander

Russia hopes to end a humiliating two-decade absence from deep space with the launch on Wednesday of an ambitious three-year mission to bring back a soil sample from Mars' moon Phobos russian scientists have dreamed of probing the Red Planet's potato-shaped satellite since the 1960s heyday of pioneering Soviet forays into space.

Dust from Phobos, they say, will hold clues to the genesis of the solar system's planets and help clarify Mars' enduring mysteries, including whether it is or ever was suited for life but the USD $163 million Phobos-Grunt mission is haunted by memories of past failures in Moscow's efforts to explore Mars and its moons.

"Mars has always been an inhospitable planet for Russia. The United States has had much more success there," said Maxim Martynov, the project's chief designer at NPO Lavochkin, the major Russian aerospace company that made the Phobos-Grunt Russia kept rocketing cosmonauts into orbit though the purse-pinched 1990s and is now the only country whose craft now carry crews to the international space station.

Tourism Links

New mystery could rewrite Mars’ history

A geologist at the University at Buffalo has suggested that one of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet’s history.

Tracy Gregg found that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft data.

New mystery could rewrite Mars’ history
After early Mars scientists decided Hesperia Planum looked like a lava-filled plain, no one really revisited the matter and the place was used to exemplify something rather important: The base of a major transitional period in the geologic time scale of Mars, she stated.

But when Gregg and her student Carolyn Roberts started looking at this classic Martian lava plain with modern data sets, they ran into trouble.

“There’s a volcano in Hesperia Planum that not many people pay attention to because it’s very small,” Gregg said.

“As I started looking closer at the broader region — I can’t find any other volcanic vents, any flows. I just kept looking for evidence of lava flows. It’s kind of frustrating. There is nothing like that in the Hesperia Planum.


Read More

Early Mars likely warm and wet

Researchers have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence that’s consistent with a warmer and wetter Martian past.

By analyzing carbonate minerals in a four-billion-year-old meteorite that originated near the surface of Mars, the scientists determined that the minerals formed at about 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The thing that’s really cool is that 18 degrees is not particularly cold nor particularly hot,” says Woody Fischer, assistant professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and coauthor of the paper, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s kind of a remarkable result.”

Knowing the temperature of Mars is crucial to understanding the planet’s history—its past climate and whether it once had liquid water.

The Mars rovers and orbiting spacecraft have found ancient deltas, rivers, lakebeds, and mineral deposits, suggesting that water did indeed flow. Because Mars now has an average temperature of −63 degrees Celsius, the existence of liquid water in the past means that the climate was much warmer then.


Read More

Mars Express Finds Supersaturated Water Vapor in Mars' Atmosphere

Mars Express was able to accomplish what so many other spacecraft have tried and failed by using a SPICAM(2) spectrometer

The search for water on Mars has been ongoing for quite some time now, with Mars rovers like NASA's Spirit and Opportunity being two examples of those who have found clues that point to a once-tropical past on the dusty red planet billions of years ago.

Now, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has discovered that Mars' atmosphere holds water vapor in a supersaturated state.

Mars Express was able to accomplish what so many other spacecraft have tried and failed by using a SPICAM(2) spectrometer. While other spacecraft have used tools that concentrate only on surface data, which only analyzes the horizontal component of the Martian atmosphere, SPICAM(2) utilizes solar occultation to observe the vertical component of the atmosphere, which is critical for understanding Mars' hydrological cycle. Solar occultation studies light from the Sun in Martian atmosphere during sunrise and sunset.


Read More

See Mars near the moon on equinox Friday

On Friday, Sept. 23, the sun will cross the celestial equator, heading south, in the annual equinox marking the start of the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere and the spring in the south. But this year's equinox brings a special treat: the moon and planet Mars shining together at dawn.

The north's autumnal equinox will occur Friday at 5:05 a.m. EDT (0905 GMT). If you look high toward the east-southeast at sunrise, you’ll see a lovely crescent moon, and hovering above and to its left will be a modestly bright "star" with a yellow-orange tinge. That's no star, but rather the famous Red Planet, Mars.

The sky map of Mars and the moon here shows how they will appear on the Friday's equinox.

These days, Mars is coming up about five hours before sunrise — around 1:50 a.m. local daylight time. It currently resides in the dim constellation of Cancer, the Crab. It's currently 173 million miles from Earth and shines as brightly as a first-magnitude star. (Remember, astronomers measure the brightness of objects as "magnitude." The lower an object's magnitude, the brighter it appears

Read More

'Asteroid Next', 'Moon Next' to dominate future space programs, Mars much later: NASA

“Asteroid Next” and “Moon Next” will dominate NASA and ISEC group’s future space exploration efforts over the next 25 years while “Mars Next” will also follow soon.

NASA has released the Global Exploration Roadmap (GER) developed by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group with 12 space agencies, including NASA, during the past year to advance coordinated space exploration.

The GER begins with the International Space Station and expands human presence throughout the solar system, leading ultimately to crewed missions to explore the surface of Mars.

The roadmap identifies two potential pathways: “Asteroid Next” and “Moon Next.” Each pathway represents a mission scenario that covers a 25-year period with a logical sequence of robotic and human missions. Both pathways were deemed practical approaches to address common high-level exploration goals developed by the participating agencies, recognizing that individual preferences among them may vary.

The following space agencies participated in developing the GER (in alphabetical order): ASI (Italy), CNES (France), CSA (Canada), DLR (Germany), ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (India), JAXA (Japan), (KARI (Republic of Korea), NASA (United States of America), NSAU (Ukraine), Roscosmos (Russia), UKSA (United Kingdom).

Read More

Mars micro-rover Kapvik may tether to larger vehicles

Engineers at Carleton University in Canada have demonstrated a small-scale rover that could be used as a risk-assessment tool in explorations of the surface of Mars and the moon.

The Kapvik micro-rover is inspired by design concepts seen in NASA's Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity rovers. It has six wheels, weighs less than 66 pounds, and could be deployed by larger unmanned rovers to scout out specific areas.

One problem that has dogged Martian rovers is getting stuck in sand or other topographic features. The Kapvik, named for an Inuktitut term for "wolverine," has a tethering system for winching it up hills.

The Canadian Space Agency is coordinating development of the rover, and partners include aerospace company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates as well as Toronto's Ryerson University, which created a utility arm that will collect surface samples and perform trenching operations.

Sensors planned for Kapvik include ultraviolet-visible spectrum, infrared imaging, and mapping tools to detect water and ice content.

Kapviks could serve as low-cost, adaptive rovers that would be remotely piloted and lower the chances of losing more elaborate, expensive rovers to inhospitable terrain.

Read more:

NASA Aims For Moon, Mars and Asteroids

I hope later on we can all remember this moment as being as full of hope and promise as it seems right now. NASA is introducing, via a press conference, a new space launch vehicle aimed at taking astronauts to the moon, asteroids, and Mars. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison called the rocket “a new beginning.” There’s an aim to get people to Mars by 2030.

You can view a press release, complete with artists’ concepts and videos, for the new vehicle here, and watch the press conference here. And here is a more detailed story on the technology behind it.

This new rocket is in many ways a repudiation of much that the space shuttle stood for. Astronauts will ride in a capsule at the top of the rocket, as they did in the famous Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. This should make them safer than shuttle astronauts who were strapped to the side of the launch vehicle, the Senators said. It will have a massive ability to launch as much as 110 tons into space, four times what the shuttle could manage.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with one of biotech’s ranking futurists, Martine Rothblatt, more than a year ago. Rothblatt is currently chief executive of biotech United Therapeutics, which she founded, but before that she was one of the central figures in creating Sirius Satellite Radio. At the beginning of an interview for a profile I was writing about her biotech company, we spent some time talking about her first passion, which was space.

Read More

NASA's return to the moon

When NASA and 14 space agencies formed the "Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture," returning to the Moon became a reality. Using important data from the Mars expeditions, future colonization is now more than a possibility.

A planned milestone in NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration was to colonize mysterious Mars, the unfathomable red planet. However, common sense is now saying to return to the Moon first...at least, according to NASA and 1,000 scientists, space advocates, engineers, commercial entrepreneurs and the public.

Over the past year, NASA sent out two questionnaires regarding a return to the Moon. One was entitled “Why should we return to the moon?” and the second was “What do we hope to accomplish through lunar exploration?” NASA reports that the questionnaire responses have led to the development of Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture---with NASA and 14 global space agencies participating in its venture.

According to NASA’s Science News, plans were made six years ago for a return to the Moon even as Mars was being actively studied. However, both planets have much in common:

• The Moon has no atmosphere – the atmosphere of Mars is relatively thin.
• Mars has only one-third of the Earth’s gravity while the Moon has one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity.
• Both the Moon and Mars are cold: the Moon can be -240 degrees in the shadows while Mars varies from -20 degrees to -100 degrees.
• Both the Moon and Mars are covered with loose “regolith” dust that covers solid rock, with both worlds having layers of regolith 10+ meters deep.

Read more:

Plans to build budget trip to Mars

NASA is working with private industry to go well beyond simply supplying ferry flights to the International Space Station, but to Mars on the cheap.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is preparing to launch its second test Dragon capsule on 30 November with the intention of docking it at the space station.

In addition to carrying cargo to and from the station, SpaceX plans to upgrade the Dragon to fly people into space and to one day land it on Mars.

"We figured out that for a pretty low cost, a Dragon capsule on a Falcon Heavy (rocket) could go to Mars for hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions," says Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, speaking at the NewSpace 2011 commercial space conference last weekend.

The mission, informally known as Red Dragon, would follow NASA's upcoming US$2.5 billion (AU$2.3 billion) Mars Science Laboratory, which is due to launch in November and arrive on Mars next August. Its goal is to determine if the red planet is, or ever was, suitable for microbial life.

Read More

NASA's future: Let's go to Mars, an asteroid

With the end of the space shuttle program, NASA shifts its sights onto new projects.

Since the 1958 Space Act, NASA has held a strong foothold in space discovery and science. With the conclusion of the space-shuttle program, NASA is reevaluating its goals and looking for ways to continue to expand space travel.

"Human space flight has a bright future, Lori Garver, NASA Deputy Administator, said. "The space shuttle was a great program, and we are so pleased that that program is now leading to the next great adventures in space."

NASA's immediate goals are to make successful trips to an asteroid and then to the planet Mars. NASA hopes that using the technology developed under the Shuttle program for these next missions will be big money savers.

"We are looking at being able to go to space for a lot less money using advanced technology and using the aerospace industry," Garver said.

Read More

Where Will the Next Mars Rover Land? NASA to Announce Crater Choice Friday

NASA is set to announce the landing site for its next Mars rover Friday (July 22), and one thing's for certain: It will be a crater.

Earlier this month, the space agency revealed that its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission will drop the car-size Curiosity rover down at either Gale Crater or Eberswalde Crater. Both Martian sites appear to preserve a record of ancient water activity. That's crucial, because Curiosity's main task is to assess whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life.

So which crater has NASA picked? The space agency hasn't tipped its hand, saying publicly that both craters have a lot to offer and that choosing between them is tough.

Read More

NASA's Opportunity Tops 20 Miles of Mars Driving

More than seven years into what was planned as a three-month mission on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has driven more than 20 miles, which is more than 50 times the mission's original distance goal.

A drive of 407 feet (124 meters) completed on July 17 took Opportunity past the 20-mile mark (32.2 kilometers). It brought the rover to within a few drives of reaching the rim of Endeavour crater, the rover's team's long-term destination since mid-2008. Endeavour is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter, and its western rim exposes outcrops that record information older than any Opportunity has examined so far. The rover is now about eight-tenths of a mile (about 1.3 kilometers) from the site chosen for arriving at the rim.

"The numbers aren't really as important as the fact that driving so much farther than expected during this mission has put a series of exciting destinations within Opportunity's reach," said Alfonso Herrera, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. who has worked on the rover missions since before launch in 2003.

The latest drive included an autonomous hazard detection portion during which the rover paused at intervals to check for obstacles before proceeding.

Herrera said, "Autonomous hazard detection has added a significant portion of the driving distance over the past few months. It lets us squeeze 10 to 15 percent more distance into each drive."

Read More

SpaceX chief sets his sights on Mars

Don't expect to hear any nostalgia about the soon-to-end space shuttle era from Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of Space Exploration Technologies. Musk isn't prone to look to the past, but rather to the future — to a "new era of spaceflight" that eventually leads to Mars.

SpaceX may be on the Red Planet sooner than you think: When I talked with him in advance of the shuttle Atlantis' last liftoff, the 40-year-old engineer-entrepreneur told me the company's Dragon capsule could take on a robotic mission to Mars as early as 2016. And he's already said it'd be theoretically possible to send humans to Mars in the next 10 to 20 years — bettering NASA's target timeframe of the mid-2030s.

You can't always take Musk's timelines at face value. This is rocket science, after all, and Musk himself acknowledges that his company's projects don't always finish on time. But if he commits himself to a task, he tends to see it through. "It may take more time than I expected, but I'll always come through," he told me a year ago.

Read More