[CENTRAAL] MARS - De Missies! Deel 9

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Op zaterdag 15 december 2012 01:38 schreef Pek het volgende:
Dat kleine stukje duurt nog zo'n 3 jaar, toch? ETA 2015

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Mars One announces requirements for Red Planet colonists

Mars One, a Netherlands-based non-profit company that hopes to deliver the first humans to the Red Planet by 2023, has issued a list of basic requirements for those willing to become Mars colony pioneers.

The most important criteria are to be at least 18 years old, to be intelligent, in good mental and physical health and to be dedicated to the project. Candidates will be subject to a prolonged televised selection process that will begin later this year.

"Gone are the days when bravery and the number of hours flying a supersonic jet were the top criteria," Norbert Kraft, Mars One's chief medical director and a former NASA researcher, said in a statement. "Now, we are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others, in the long journey from Earth to Mars and for a lifetime of challenges ahead."

The first colonists will land on the Red Planed in April 2023. New members will arrive every two years after that.
None of the Red planet pioneers, the company notes, will ever return to the Earth.

To cover the mission costs, about $6 billion, Mars One says it will launch a reality show, a sort of interplanetary reality show a la "Big Brother", and raise the needed funds by selling corporate sponsorships.

Mars One estimates that it will cost about $6 billion to put the first four astronauts on Mars. While this may seem like a daunting sum for a non-governmental entity, the company is confident it can raise the needed funds by selling corporate sponsorships.

While candidates for the Mars mission will be undergoing the selection process and the whole planet will be observing it on their TVs, Mars One will launch a communications satellite and a supply mission to Mars in 2016, then send a large rover to the Red Planet in 2018, according to the video.

The rover will find the most suitable site for the new Mars colony. After that in 2020 the company will send all necessary settlement components - habitat units, life-support equipment and another rover.

Mars One officials admit they have already approached a number of private spaceflight companies and secured one potential supplier for each colony component. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket which is still under development but expected to perform its first flight next year, is expected to deliver many components of the first colony to the Red Planet.

Source: Voice of Russia

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"None of the Red planet pioneers, the company notes, will ever return to the Earth".
Het is geen baantje voor een Flexwerker

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January 22, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, one of the twin rovers that bounced to airbag-cushioned safe landings on Mars nine years ago this week, is currently examining veined rocks on the rim of an ancient crater.

Opportunity has driven 22.03 miles (35.46 kilometers) since it landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, PST (Jan. 25, Universal Time). Its original assignment was to keep working for three months, drive about 2,000 feet (600 meters) and provide the tools for researchers to investigate whether the area's environment had ever been wet. It landed in a backyard-size bowl, Eagle Crater. During those first three months, it transmitted back to Earth evidence that water long ago soaked the ground and flowed across the surface.

Since then, the mission's team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has driven Opportunity across the plains of Meridiani to successively larger craters for access to material naturally exposed from deeper, older layers of Martian history.

Opportunity has operated on Mars 36 times longer than the three months planned as its prime mission.

"What's most important is not how long it has lasted or even how far it has driven, but how much exploration and scientific discovery Opportunity has accomplished," said JPL's John Callas, manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project. The project has included both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, which ceased operations in 2010.

This month, Opportunity is using cameras on its mast and tools on its robotic arm to investigate outcrops on the rim of Endeavour Crater, 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. Results from this area of the rim, called "Matijevic Hill," are providing information about a different, possibly older wet environment, less acidic than the conditions that left clues the rover found earlier in the mission.

Timed with the anniversary of the landing, the rover team has prepared a color panorama of the Matijevic Hill area. The image is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16703 .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL also manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project and its rover, Curiosity.

For more information about Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .


Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov