2. Destination Mars

3. What Challenges do NASA Scientists face getting Rovers to safely land on Mars?

4. Planet Mars Facts Distance From Sun227,936,640km Diameter6,794km Volume (Earth=1) 0.149 Mass 6.42 x 10 to 23 rd power Density 3.94 gm/cm 3 Surface Gravity0.38 (Earth=1) Rotation period 1.026 Earth days Revolution period686.98 Earth days Mean surface temperature-5.15 to –87.15 C Natural satellites Phobos and Deimos

5. Distance Learning 3. How will it handle surprises encountered in the Martian Terrain? Project Goal: To design a rover system that can handle anything Mars can throw at us. Main concerns 1. Check for limitations before rover lands 2. Is the rover going to function after landing?

6. Mission to Mars *Using sophisticated equipment, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity will search for and study different types of rocks and soils that might hold evidence of water in Mars’ past. So far, scientists have found only frozen water on Mars. The rovers are searching for evidence that liquid water once flowed freely on Mars.

7. Landing Sites *Spirit will land in the Gusev Crater, a deep basin that scientists believe might have once held water. *Opportunity will land at a site called Meridiani Planum, chosen because it contains hematite deposits. Hematite is an iron-oxide mineral thought to occur only in the presence of water.

8. Gusev Crater – Spirit Landing Site

9. Getting Started Before the rovers could be launched, years of study and testing took place. First, scientists needed to know what they would be facing.

10. Mars Fun Zone NASA researchers developed the Spirit and Opportunity to drive up steep hills and descend almost vertical cliffs. * To test the rovers for the unpredictable terrain, the Mars rover team built a Mars Yard Sandbox at the Jet Propulsion lab. * For a week and a half, they tested the rovers in 6 inches of sand on a 0 to 20 degree slope.

11. How to Land Softly on a Hard Planet The Spirit and Opportunity are using an airbag made of a new material called vectran. The airbags must be strong enough to cushion the spacecraft on rocks or rough terrain and allow it to bounce on Mars surface at freeway speeds after landing. Upon coming to a complete stop the airbags deflate.

12. Rover Landing NASA Engineers test the airbags at Glenn Research Center in Ohio to make sure that there are no problems that would prevent a safe landing. *A test spacecraft and airbag system weighing about 1,180 pounds is accelerated with a bungee cord system onto a platform with rocks at landing speed, 20 to 24 yards per second.

13. The most important role of the airbag system is to protect the research equipment on the twin rovers. -Eight cameras in 4 pairs -A microscopic imaging camera to be used at the end of a long arm like a geologists hand lens -spectrometers and magnets for chemical and element analysis -RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool) that will spin around and grind circular patches off of the surface of rocks exposing the rocks interior The MERs (Mars Exploration Rovers) have powerful instruments to act as remote geologists. *They will carry all the mission equipment, including: Sending RATS to Mars

14. Anatomy of a Rover