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Home | Update | Latest Issue | Gallery | FR Profile | Datafiles | FR 11/96 THREE PROBES TO MARS by Wolfgang Engelhardt Recent reports about possible traces of primitive life on Mars are the proper lead-up for the launch of three new space probes to the planet. The American Mars Global Surveyor will be the send-off to this scientific space probe armada. Its launch on board a Delta rocket is scheduled for the beginning of November from Florida. The probe, which weighs nearly one ton, will reach Mars after a flight time of nine months. It will then enter an orbit at an altitude of 370 km covering the poles of the planet. The payload of the robot includes six cameras as well as infrared and ultraviolet sensors. According to the plan, this robot will survey the stony surface and the atmosphere of Mars over a period of at least one year. Mars Global Surveyor's best photos will supposedly be able to show stone pieces of only 1,5 meters in size. NASA is furthermore planning to launch the Mars Pathfinder probe with a Delta rocket in the beginning of December. This space probe will reach Mars in mid-1997 after a transfer flight of half a year. It will then release a landing capsule which will carry a small Rover to the planet's surface. This small vehicle will do some surveys in the vicinity of the landing site. The scientists hope to obtain new pictures directly from the surface of Mars, along with an evaluation of the environmental conditions and a chemo-physical analysis of Mars' soil. Mars Pathfinder is enclosed in a protective capsule (3 meters large, 800 kg weight) for the transfer flight. A heat shield protects the vehicle when the space probe enters the Mars atmosphere. A parachute reduces the vertical speed for landing on the planet's surface, aided by an overdimensional airbag which is designed to cushion the impact on the ground. Only then the three protective covers of the capsule open and release the solar cells to ensure the vehicle's energy supply. Following an internal systems check, first photos and measurements are transmitted to the earth via a small directional antenna. The region Ares Valles has been selected as landing site on Mars. The area is pretty free of large rocks and also very close to the equator. Furthermore, this region was flooded in ancient times by a large river system and due to its low elevation is characterized by a relatively high atmospheric pressure. Such an area might once have offered good conditions for the development of simple lifeforms, traces of which the scientists now hope to find. Mars Pathfinder's most important instrument is a small camera which can be raised on a mast to record stereo and colour pictures of the surrounding stone desert. This imaging system was developed with the participation of German experts from the University of Braunschweig and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomie, which had already developed the successful camera for the European Giotto space probe for the research of the Halley comet. German scientists were also involved in the development of the instrumentation of the small (only 16 kg) Mars Rover. The equipment is no bigger than a remote controlled toy car. The vehicle, called "Sojour-ner", is driven, forward or rearward, by six mini-wheels. Its energy supply comes from a small solar generator mounted on its roof. Along with a small camera, the Mars car's only other feature is chemical analysis equipment which was developed by the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. However, the equipment still has to prove that it can detect traces of life in Mars' soil. The large Russian Mars '96 mission is the third space probe to the red planet and will be launched at the end of November with a Proton rocket from Kazakhstan. This mission combines the scientific goals of the two American space probes. The Russian apparatus weighs six tons and comprises a Mars satellite as well as several landing vehicles. However, Mars '96's transfer flight takes almost a year. Only by the end of 1997 will the space probe enter an orbit around the planet and will activate the approximately 40 experiments, weighing 645 kg. The Russian Mars mission has a very international character. Approximately a dozen of the instruments have been developed with the participation of foreign scientists, among them mainly German and French experts. The two cameras, which are to generate high-resolution stereo pictures and wide-angle pictures of the Mars surface, have the most important task of the system. These cameras were designed by the Academy of Scientists from the former German Democratic Republic and by the Institute of Planetary Research of the German Aerospace Research Institution in Berlin-Adlershof under the management of Professor Gerhard Neukum. From page 32 of FLUG REVUE 11/96 Home | Update | Latest Issue | Gallery | FR Profile | Datafiles | FR 11/96 Copyright 1996 by Motor-Presse Stuttgart. All rights reserved. Last updated October 20, 1996