Science

NASA SHOCK: Space agency teases COMPLETE Mars 2020 Rover craft in AMAZING photos


NASA harbours long-term ambitions to attempt a manned Mars mission. The next step will see the US space agency launch its seventh Mars rover at he Red Planet. And NASA appears on schedule for the 2020 Mars rover mission, with a new photo showing the project’s completed spacecraft.

The latest photo shows a NASA engineer inspecting the completed spacecraft.

The spacecraft will now be tested in the Space Simulator Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The craft’s complete cruise stage is seen suspended by cables, and is the part which will power and guide the Mars 2020 spacecraft on its seven-month voyage to the Red Planet.

Directly below that is the aeroshell with its white back shell and barely visible black heat shield.

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The aeroshell will protect the spacecraft during its long voyage as well as during its fiery descent into the Mars’ atmosphere.

The Mars 2020 spacecraft was tested in the 25ft-wide, 85ft-tall (8m by 26m) chamber in the same configuration it will be in while hurtling through deep space.

The 2020 rover carries an entirely new suite of instruments, including a sample-caching system that will collect samples of Mars for return to Earth on subsequent missions.

NASA’s Mars rover mission is scheduled to blast-off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in July of 2020 and land on Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

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This will not be NASA’s first rover on Mars.

Four previous rovers have been deployed to Mars, all managed by the NASA’s JPL.

Sojourner, the Mars Pathfinder landed on the Red Planet on July 4, 1997, and remained operational until communications were lost two months later.

Spirit followed, landing on January 4, 2004, which surprised everyone by continuing to transmit until March 22, 2010.

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Opportunity came shortly after, landing on January, 25 2004. and managed to operate for fifteen years, until a dust storm in 2018 blocked its solar panels and the rover died.

Finally, Curiosity was landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, and is still operational.

The Mars 2020 rover is expected to operate for at least a Martian year – approximately 687 days – and will wield a drill to extract samples from soil and rocks.

NASA will not return those samples back to Eart, but hopes this “sample caching” could be a first demonstration of a process that might eventually allow such extracts to be brought back to Earth.



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