|
WASHINGTON, (AFP) - The U.S. space agency NASA will send two robots to separate regions of Mars in 2004 to seek out past or present traces of water, NASA associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler said here.
"To have two rovers driving over dramatically different regions of Mars at the same time, to be able to drive over and see what's on the other side of the hill, it's an incredibly exciting idea," he told a press conference.
Last month, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced it was sending one rover to the red planet, but after checking its budget, it decided there was enough money for two.
The robots will be launched within two weeks of each other in May and June of 2003 atop Delta II rockets from Kennedy Space Center, at Cape Canaveral, Florida. If all goes well, the two spacecraft will touch down on Mars, after a seven-and-a-half-month space flight, on January 2 and 20, 2004.
The robots will touch down in two separate regions of the planet in a similar fashion to the Pathfinder rover landing in 1997: a parachute will slow its descent and inflatable balloons will make for a soft if bouncy landing.
Although they will be under remote control from Earth, the rovers are capable of more autonomy and freedom of movement than their predecessors Pathfinder and Sojourner who took spectacular pictures of the barren Martian landscape, but which did not stray far from the landing site.
The robots, each weighing 330 pounds, are capable of covering 328 feet per Martian day (24 hours, 37 minutes). Their sophisticated instruments will analyze the mineral content of the soil, and a wide-angle camera will take snapshots of the surroundings.
"The goal of both rovers will be to learn about ancient water and climate on Mars," Cornell University Professor Steven Squyres, Principal Investigator for the rovers' Athena science package, told reporters.
"You can think of each rover as a robotic field geologist, equipped to read the geologic record at its landing site and to learn what the conditions were like back when the rocks and soils there were formed," he added. The actual landing sites have not been determined yet, but the scientists said it would be in areas where they hope to find water.
Stung by the failures in 1999 of the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter, NASA was reluctant to send a single robot or orbiting satellite to Mars in 2003. NASA had already cut back two Mars missions it will launch 2001, leaving only one orbiting satellite
|
