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Beat the Curse of Mars

Four spacecraft make their way to Mars

The fact that Mars was close to us last summer was not hidden from the eyes of the spacefaring nations. No less than four spacecraft are making their way to Mars. Three of them were launched this summer and one, a Japanese one, circled the Earth for about four years due to a malfunction in the launch, and is now on its way to Mars, but it is not certain that even if it gets there it will be able to carry out its mission. A kind of curse hangs over the red planet - 20 of the 30 launches to it so far have ended in failure. The last spacecraft launched outside the US, Russia's "Mission 96 to Mars" in 1996, crashed in the Pacific Ocean after the launch rocket failed. In 1999, two American spacecraft crashed on Mars: the Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander.

The reason for the density of launches is related to an unusual astronomical event: the distance between Earth and Mars is the smallest in the last 73 thousand years, only 55.8 million kilometers (see: "A red and close star" Galileo, 61 of the news section). The next time the distance between the two stars will be so short is expected to occur only in 2287. A journey from Earth to Mars usually takes 10-12 months, while due to the small distance between the planets the current journey of the spacecrafts on their way will last only 7 months. For this reason, NASA decided to send two robots in an attempt to increase the chance of taking advantage of the astronomical window of opportunity.

We will return to the Japanese spacecraft later, but among those launched in 2003, the first spacecraft was actually the European Space Agency's Mars Express. This spacecraft will circle Mars and will launch images that will be taken by the lander it carries: Beagle 2. The spacecraft - which belongs to the European Union as a whole, but was developed in Great Britain and therefore bears the name of the ship in which Charles Darwin explored, carries a variety of scientific instruments that will be dug into the Martian soil, will be tested the rocks and look for water. "We are going to look for evidence of life in the past, or even for microorganisms living today," said David Southwood, the European Space Agency's scientific director.

"The European Mars Express spacecraft represents the largest effort to explore Mars so far by the European Space Agency," says the agency's website. Science fiction can be an inspiration because one of the main goals is to find out whether humans can survive on the planet (and see: Peter Hillman - "Living on Mars", Galileo, issue 55). "For me as a scientist, it is important that we take the first step towards a manned mission to Mars that can be launched in 20-25 years" said Southwood.

The British spacecraft will be a sort of 2003 version of the two Viking spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1976, which did not find conclusive evidence for the existence of life on Mars, although they did not completely disprove this possibility either. Mars Express, which weighs 1.12 tons, was built for the European Space Agency by a European group led by the Astrium company. Astrium was launched on June 2 on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

At the end of November, all the systems on board the Mars Express will be activated, and then it will be ready to release the Beagle 2. The compartment, which weighs a total of 60 kg and contains the tiny lander, will be directed on December 20 to the trajectory that is supposed to land on Mars. It is scheduled to enter the Martian atmosphere after five days, on Christmas Day. When entering, the lander is protected by a heat shield. Two parachutes will open and provide additional deceleration. When its weight will decrease to 30 kilograms after launching the deceleration missiles, it will land in the area known as Isidis Planitia. Three airbags will soften the final touch on the ground. This critical phase of the mission will last a total of ten minutes, from atmospheric entry to landing. When it lands it will broadcast the good news with a tune by the British pop band Bloor.

In the meantime, Mars Express' engines will be fired and they will perform a series of maneuvers to enter orbit around Mars. At this point the main engine will be activated, providing the deceleration necessary to achieve a highly elliptical intermediate orbit. Four more ignitions will be required to reach the final track. This is an almost polar orbit, at a height of 250 kilometers above the surface of Mars.

On the ground, a laboratory the size of an umbrella will be opened from Beagle 2, and a mechanical arm with excavators, spectrometers, and cameras, as well as an array of solar cells to provide electricity, will break out of it. About a third of the spacecraft's weight is dedicated to pure science and most of it will be occupied by a spectrometer that will be used to measure the mass and chemical composition of the surface. "We calculate the activity according to an operational lifetime of 180 days, if we're lucky, before the solar collectors are covered in dust," said Beagle 2 Chief Scientist Colin Filinger. According to Filinger, the temperature drops every night to minus seventy degrees Celsius. "We will look for water and minerals that could provide us with evidence if there was flowing water and organic materials on the planet. If we can show that life evolved there, it will answer the biggest question facing humanity," Pillinger said, adding: "If we can find any evidence of life - in whatever form - in space, that would be wonderful. This will finally prove that we are not alone."

Randall Keynes, Darwin's great-grandson and coincidentally also a relative of the economist John Maynard Keynes was excited. "Darwin must have been very excited if he heard about the Beagle,"2 Keynes said about a year ago at the opening of an exhibition at the British National Maritime Museum about the Beagle's voyages. "The basic question asked in both Beagle journeys is how life began. Darwin caused a revolution in the religious view with the theory of evolution about natural selection. If we find life on another planet, think what the consequences will be." Keynes says that despite the 172 years separating the two beagles, his grandfather would have known and appreciated the initiative. Navigation was also important to Darwin in the original Beagle and is also essential to the Beagle,"2 he added. "Darwin also asked big questions about life, as Beagle is doing now."2

A few weeks after the launch, it was reported that problems had been discovered in the European Mars Express spacecraft, which has been making its way to Mars since the beginning of June 2003. The fault is in the power system, and it was reported that the spacecraft is only operating at seventy percent of its energy output, but nevertheless there are high chances that it will reach its destination and succeed in fulfilling its mission .

A pair of robotic vehicles

The American space agency (NASA) successfully launched on July 8 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a spacecraft carrying a space vehicle, whose purpose is to explore the planet Mars. The NASA people breathed a sigh of relief when for two weeks they had to repeatedly fix malfunctions in the spacecraft. NASA increased the tests of its missions to Mars after losing two spacecraft in 1999. The "Climate Orbiter" flew too close to the surface of Mars due to embarrassing errors: errors between data transferred between programs written by two different teams - one in inches and the other in metric measurements, And the "Mars Fuller Lander" spacecraft crashed after its braking rockets stopped working.

Both rovers were designed to act as a field geologist in search of evidence of water activities in the past of Mars. Each of the robots is a device in the shape and size of a golf cart, suitable for a three-month stay on the planet. The robot, called "Opportunity", is supposed to join the first space vehicle of its kind, "Spirit", which was launched on June 10, and the two will reach Mars together in early January. The names of the robots were chosen from among ten thousand proposals in an attempt to find nicknames for them that would appeal to the American public. It is possible that the reason for NASA's strong desire to make the American public like the robots is related to the cost that will be incurred: about 800 million dollars.

Each of the vehicles is equipped with a set of scientific equipment that includes a pair of cameras that will take pictures in panoramic stereo; Microscopic camera and three spectrometers. Additional stereo cameras will be used for vehicle navigation; Two additional pairs of cameras will be used to detect obstacles in the travel path. An additional camera will be placed on the bottom of the lander to help reduce horizontal movement before a possible impact with an obstacle. All 10 cameras in each of the spacecraft - three scientific cameras and seven engineering cameras - work well at least in all the experiments carried out during the flight. One of the three spectrometers (scientific cameras) on "Spirit" returned data that did not fit the format required of them. The other two spectrometers on the Spirit and all three spectrometers on board "Opportunity" are working as normal. Among other things, the spacecraft carry an X-ray (X-ray) spectrometer that examines alpha particles, and a spectrometer
M?ssbauer These two are on an adjustable arm that comes out of the vehicle and in which soil samples will be photographed closely to analyze the composition of the rocks and soil.

NASA does not expect the spacecraft to provide data indicating signs of life on Mars. However, if they manage to find evidence of the existence of water sources, scientists will be able to know if in the past there were conditions on the planet that allowed the formation of life.
Their landing sites, in opposite areas of the planet even though both are near the equator, were carefully chosen after a comprehensive study in which the nature of the surface of Mars was examined according to images received from a photography satellite that orbits it since 1997 and provides sharp images to researchers on Earth.

Geological evidence has been discovered that rivers and streams once flowed on the surface of Mars, and there were lakes and seas on its surface. The researchers processed images of cliffs and gullies on the surface of the planet and demonstrated how these geological formations were formed as a result of strong water flow in the past. However, the researchers did not find clear answers to the strange fact that all rivers begin and end abruptly, without splitting into narrower channels. The explanation is that unlike on Earth, where the source of water is in showers, the water on the surface of Mars mostly originates from underground water reservoirs. The research has recently received reinforcements with the discovery of underground ice deposits on Mars, a fact that indicates that the water may have flowed and frozen, as a result of drastic changes in the planet's climate (see box).

NASA's reconnaissance vehicles will, therefore, be launched to sites where strong evidence has been found for water flow in the past and the existence of ice deposits in the present, and will provide data on the rocks and their mineral composition, to confirm the hypotheses. They will transmit the images and information to a satellite orbiting the planet, which will send them back to Earth.

The current mission cost NASA 800 million dollars and the space researchers hope to repeat the success of the mission in 1997, when a mobile robot (Sojourner) first landed on Mars. The new robots are supposed to be more advanced and transmit information and images from the rocks and the ground directly to different centers around the world.

Last chance for Japanese hope

A Japanese spaceship launched in 1998 approached the Earth in order to increase speed to allow it to reach Mars. The spaceship, Nozumi, (hope in Japanese), was hit by a solar flare immediately after launch and may not reach its destination. Its overheated systems are malfunctioning and must be repaired somehow so the spacecraft doesn't miss Mars and get lost in space.

Yasunori Matogawa, director of the Japanese Kagoshima Space Center, said: "In my estimation, there is a fifty percent chance of success in Nozomi's restoration based on the data we currently have." The spacecraft is already five years behind schedule and running out of fuel. The solar flare damaged the spacecraft's communication and electrical systems. The spacecraft's altitude control heating system is not working and this will cause problems when Nozomi moves away from the sun. The fuel has frozen and she may not be able to ignite her deceleration rockets when she reaches orbit around Mars.

"They're in big trouble," said Dr. David Williams of NASA's Goddard Space Center in Maryland. "If the heating system doesn't work, it may pass over Mars. In any case, they won't be able to activate her devices."

The next spacecraft to Mars

A mission to the North Pole of Mars that will explore the high latitudes will be launched in 2007, NASA announced at the beginning of August 2003. The spacecraft, unmanned of course, will be called Phoenix. It is planned to land on Mars in 2008 and will examine underground samples to see if they contain organic molecules. If everything goes well, Phoenix will be the first in the Mars Scouts series, a program with a budget of 325 million dollars for the study of the red planet. As I recall, one of the spacecraft that crashed on Mars in 2001 was the Mars Fuller Lander spacecraft that was supposed to land at the South Pole.

>Box:
Recent discoveries: the water debate

While Mars is full of channels, which seem as if they could only be formed as a result of the activity of flowing water, data sent from unmanned spacecraft on Mars led some scientists to the assumption that the red planet's rust color did not come from the presence and activity of water as is commonly assumed, but was created by a thin stream of Small meteorites that fell on the surface In early September 2003, the magazine "New Scientist" quoted Albert Yen from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who said that data from the Pathfinder mission that took place in 96-97 indicate the existence of meteorites and dust that include iron and magnesium on the surface of Mars. "If this is indeed the case, maybe Mars didn't have to be wet after all", it says: 3/9/03 Many scientists estimated that the red color came from chemical processes between the iron in the rocks and the water that was in the ponds and rivers that today are black. According to experiments conducted by Yen, water is not needed to form rust;
In these experiments, the iron was exposed to ultraviolet radiation in a room that contained gases with a composition similar to that present in the atmosphere of Mars and at low temperatures of about sixty degrees Celsius below zero. Yen also said that the network of dry valleys and channels are proof that water did flow on the surface of Mars, but that water appears to have played only a small role in coloring the surface. The fact is that no large amounts of carbon (carbonates) were found. This means that Mars is an ice steppe that could never support life "This indicates a frozen world. "Mars has always been as it is today and was never a hot, humid and ocean-covered world in the past," said Philip Christiansen, a research partner. While the findings add weight to the view that Mars has always been cold and hostile, these scientists' claims do not satisfy everyone. Many scientists believe that the question will be solved only through the landing of robotic spacecraft, and perhaps one day astronauts on the surface of Mars.
"What's important is that we found carbonate rocks on Mars that might have hinted at a history where there was water flowing on Mars regardless of its quantity. We still have to investigate whether Mars was ever home to life." says Yen.

* Avi Blizovsky is the editor of the "Hidan" portal