OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dicit:

The three major components of the Mars 2020 spacecraft are the 539 kg (1,188 lb) cruise stage for travel between Earth and Mars; the Entry, Descent, and Landing System (EDLS) that includes the 575 kg (1,268 lb) aeroshell descent vehicle + 440 kg (970 lb) heat shield; and the 1,070 kg (2,360 lb) (fueled mass) sky crane needed to deliver Perseverance and Ingenuity safely to the Martian surface. The Sky Crane carries 400 kg (880 lb) landing propellant for the final soft landing burn after being slowed down by a 21.5 m (71 ft) wide 81 kg (179 lb) parachute. The 1,025 kg (2,260 lb) rover is based on the design of Curiosity. While there are differences in scientific instruments and the engineering required to support them, the entire landing system (including the sky crane and heat shield) and rover chassis could essentially be recreated without any additional engineering or research. This reduces overall technical risk for the mission, while saving funds and time on development.

One of the upgrades is a guidance and control technique called “Terrain Relative Navigation” (TRN) to fine-tune steering in the final moments of landing. This system will allow for a landing accuracy within 40 m (130 ft) and avoid obstacles. This is a marked improvement from the Mars Science Laboratory mission that had an elliptical area of 7 by 20 km (4.3 by 12.4 mi). In October 2016, NASA reported using the Xombie rocket to test the Lander Vision System (LVS), as part of the Autonomous Descent and Ascent Powered-flight Testbed (ADAPT) experimental technologies, for the Mars 2020 mission landing, meant to increase the landing accuracy and avoid obstacle hazards.

Video credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne

Wikipedia dicit:

Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program that includes the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone. It was launched on 30 July 2020 at 11:50 UTC, and will touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on 18 February 2021.

Perseverance will investigate an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. The Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA on 4 December 2012 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The Perseverance rover’s design is derived from the Curiosity rover, and will use many components already fabricated and tested, new scientific instruments and a core drill.

Mars 2020 was the third of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of the United Arab Emirates (Hope orbiter) and China (Tianwen-1, with an orbiter, lander, and rover). All three are expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured pictures in visible and infrared wavelengths, which were combined to create this false-color view of a region in 57-mile-wide (92-kilometer-wide) Occator Crater on the dwarf planet Ceres (in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter). Here, recently exposed brine, or salty liquids, in the center of the crater were pushed up from a deep reservoir below Ceres’ crust. In this view, they appear reddish.

Seen here is Cerealia Facula (“facula” means bright area), a 9-mile-wide (15-kilometer-wide) region with a composition dominated by salts. The central dome, Cerealia Tholus, is about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) across at its base and 1,100 feet (340 meters) tall. The dome is inside a central depression about 3,000 feet (900 meters) deep.

Dawn’s mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. JPL is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Northrop Grumman in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

NASA dicit:

NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, will make a daring attempt to “TAG” asteroid Bennu on October 20 – touch its surface and collect a sample for return to Earth. Experience the sample collection event in 360 and watch as OSIRIS-REx contacts the rocky surface of sample site Nightingale on Asteroid Bennu.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/James Tralie (ADNET): Lead Producer, Narrator/Jonathan North (USRA): Animator/Walt Feimer (KBRwyle): Animator/Michael Lentz (USRA): Art Director/Kel Elkins (USRA): Lead Visualizer/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/ Music is “Fight for the Kingdom” from Enrico Cacace and Lorenzo Castellarin

Wikipedia dicit:

Rehearsals will be performed before the sampling event, during which the solar arrays will be raised into a Y-shaped configuration to minimize the chance of dust accumulation during contact and provide more ground clearance in case the spacecraft tips over (up to 45°) during contact. The descent will be very slow to minimize thruster firings prior to contact in order to reduce the likelihood of asteroid surface contamination by unreacted hydrazine propellant. Contact with the surface of Bennu will be detected using accelerometers, and the impact force will be dissipated by a spring in the TAGSAM arm.

Upon surface contact by the TAGSAM instrument, a burst of nitrogen gas will be released, which will blow regolith particles smaller than 2 centimetres (0.8 in) into the sampler head at the end of the robotic arm. A five-second timer will limit collection time to mitigate the chance of a collision. After the timer expires, the back-away maneuver will initiate a safe departure from the asteroid.

OSIRIS-REx will then halt the drift away from the asteroid in case it is necessary to return for another sampling attempt. The spacecraft will use images and spinning maneuvers to verify the sample has been acquired as well as determine its mass and verify it is in excess of the required 60 grams (2.1 oz). In the event of a failed sampling attempt, the spacecraft will return for another try. There is enough nitrogen gas for three attempts.

In addition to the bulk sampling mechanism, contact pads on the end of the sampling head will passively collect dust grains smaller than 1 mm, upon contact with the asteroid. These pads are made from tiny loops of stainless steel.

After the sampling attempt, the Sample-Return Capsule (SRC) lid will be opened to allow the sampler head to be stowed. The arm will then be retracted into its launch configuration, and the SRC lid will be closed and latched preparing to return to Earth.

Video credit: Lockheed Martin

NASA dicit:

When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, its close-up images confirmed what mission planners had predicted nearly two decades before: Bennu is made of loose material weakly clumped together by gravity, and shaped like a spinning top. This major validation, however, was accompanied by a major surprise. Scientists had expected Bennu’s surface to consist of fine-grained material like a sandy beach, but were instead greeted by a rugged world littered with boulders – the size of cars, the size of houses, the size of football fields. Now, thanks to laser altimetry data and high-resolution imagery from OSIRIS-REx, we can take a tour of Bennu’s remarkable terrain.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA/University of Arizona/CSA/York University/MDA/Dan Gallagher (USRA): Producer/Kel Elkins (USRA): Lead Visualizer/Jonathan North (USRA): Animator/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (USRA): Animator/Dan Gallagher (USRA): Narrator/Erin Morton (The University of Arizona): Support/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Support/“Timelapse Clouds” by Andy Blythe and Marten Joustra; “The Wilderness” by Benjamin James Parsons; “Maps of Deception” by Idriss-El-Mehdi Bennani, Olivier Louis Perrot, and Philippe Andre Vandenhende