Exploration of Mars

By: Micah Cluey

Facts

● The exploration of mars has taken place over hundreds of years, beginning in earnest with the invention and development of the telescope during the 1600's.

● Engineering interplanetary journeys is very complicated, so the exploration of mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially in earlier attempts

● Roughly 2/3 of all spacecraft destined for Mars failed before completing their missions.

Mars Odyssey

● The 2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars.

● The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin

● The whole trip is expected to cost around $297 million.

● It is hoped that the data Odyssey obtains will help answer the question of whether life has ever existed on Mars.

Mars Express

● Mars Express is a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA).

● It is the first planetary mission attempted by the agency.

● “Express” originally refereed to the speed and efficiency with which the spacecraft was designed and built.

● It consists of 2 parts, The Mars Express Orbiter and the beagle 2, a lander designed to perform exobiology and geochemistry research.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbit

● Mars Reconnaissance Orbit is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit.

● The $270 Million spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

● It was launched August 12, 2005, and attained Martain orbit on March 10, 2006.

● In November 2006, after 5 months of aerobraking, it entered its final science orbit.

Opportunity

● Opportunity is a robotic rover active on the planet Mars since 2004.

● Launched on July 7, 2003, Opportunity landed on Mars' Meridaini Planum on January 25, 2004

● Opportunity has continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to earth over 38 times in its designed life time.

● Opportunity has been studying Victoria crater for over 2 years. It survived dust-storms and reached Endeavor crater in 2011.

Curiosity

● Curiosity is a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).

● It was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 10:12 EST aboard the MSL spacecraft and successfully landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale crater on August 6, 2012

● The rovers goals include: Investigation of the Martain climate and geology. Also much work with the Gale crater