Updates NASA's Mars 2020 Rover

richfororbit

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Great stuff, I hope there is something new from this. I had hoped the current mission would of eventually found something.:rolleyes:
 

jarmonik

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That is some pretty cool video captured there. It was nice the see that the parachute deployed well without any issues. I wounder how much pressure there were (kg/cm^2) on the parachute at it's maximum ?
 

Urwumpe

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That is some pretty cool video captured there. It was nice the see that the parachute deployed well without any issues. I wounder how much pressure there were (kg/cm^2) on the parachute at it's maximum ?

Well, the expected total load on the parachute during opening is 20,000 kg, according to the flight tests before the mission, for example by launching the parachute into the upper atmosphere of Earth on a Black Brant sounding rocket.

Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-2020-parachute-a-go

The NASA paper about the ASPIRE tests: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190028247/downloads/20190028247.pdf
 

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I thought the parachute open up in stages. To prevent it from ripped into pieces.
That is very strong material right there.
 

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The image of descent stage looks like it performed a soft landing! So there will be some more thing worth a visit by Perseverance :hailprobe:

I doubt that it was able to land any way of soft. It had no landing gear, it would have had to touchdown on the engines...
 

N_Molson

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The more I see this, the more I think that robots could in a near-future prepare a manned mission and improve crew safety by actually building stuff, some infrastructure that would make life much easier like solar panels and batteries, a rock-free landing zone, maybe not an habitat but all the construction materials unpacked on-site and ready to be assembled. Running a small robotic greenhouse would also be amazing. It would allow a first crewed mission to be a bit less focused on survival and to spend the time on Mars on more complex tasks.

The image of descent stage looks like it performed a soft landing! So there will be some more thing worth a visit by Perseverance

Remember that Mars gravity is only 3,71 m/s², versus 9,81 m/s² on Earth. It makes free fall much more forgiving, even though terminal velocity is a lot higher because low atmosphere density.
 

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Of course, they did it again....

Eu5ErFFXIAEaIQe.jpg


And yes, the outer ring can be interpreted as coordinates....
 

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A comment read on a forum about the parachute's message:

Not at all. In fact it means: "For sale Twingo 2016, 60,000 km, good condition, contact Nasa if interested".
 
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Thunder Chicken

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I thought the parachute open up in stages. To prevent it from ripped into pieces.
That is very strong material right there.

The ASPIRE program that developed that parachute was challenging. It opens at supersonic speeds where the air flow is highly compressible, so reefing its opening in stages really doesn't work like incompressible subsonic openings and isn't very stable, making canopy collapse and damage far more likely. It actually is more similar in design and capability to high speed stabilization drogues used in ejection seats, meant to open quickly with annular vents to limit pressure in the canopy.

 

jarmonik

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Thanks for the links. There are plenty of interesting information there. I would have guessed the dynamic pressure being 10 times higher but better that way. Also the parachute is much bigger than I expected.

Let's hope they find some volcanic rocks there, it would be interesting to know their composition. What I have looked at the data that MSL has produced, from a human presence on Mars point of view, it looks pretty good. There appears to be high quantities of chromium (0.5-3%) about 30 times the amount that's on the Earth's crust in average. So far, no sight of Copper, maybe the instruments are not able to detect it or it's not there.
 

richfororbit

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While this was a great achievement, having followed the previous mission closely via nasa.gov, I'm just speculating what could be gained from this new mission, a little similar to the last. But as always has proving tech on it.

The mission team member Mr Gupta was on the BBC's newsnight on Wednesday, and the presenter was putting the question to him, well the rock samples for collection will be a decade away at the earliest to get an analysis on them. This Jazero crater may have mysteries to discover in shape and size, or perhaps not.

The previous mission, determined that in the three billion plus years back, the planet could of supported some type of life, probably bacteria, and that there wasn't enough methane on the planet. And a number of bits and pieces, various sentiments and all that stuff.

The Maven mission also determined that the atmosphere was lost to space early in its history.

I was reminded of the missions before, the Viking, and the Carl sagan place on Mars, where the Sojourner investigated some rocks, there cleary wasn't anything there other than the rocks were eroded by weather, water billions of years in the past. Opportunity quite similar.
 

richfororbit

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While I don't want to make this a curiosity topic. I just thought I'd post this. Accidently the rover perched a rock, so it will do an analysis, so that is interesting.

 
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