From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Fri Dec 05 2003 - 08:24:27 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:10 PM
To: ljk4_at_msn.com
Subject: Mars Missions Have International Flavor
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Jocelyn Landau Constantin 011-49-6151-90-26-96
ESA, Darmstadt, Germany
Guy Webster (818) 354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
NEWS RELEASE: 2003-161
December 4, 2003
Mars Missions Have International Flavor
A European Space Agency mission that will arrive at Mars this month
has American participants, and Europeans are team members for two NASA
spacecraft that will reach Mars in January.
The European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's twin Mars
Exploration Rovers will examine the red planet in quite different and
complementary ways. "Together, these missions can provide a range of
new information about Mars that neither could provide alone," said
Dave Lavery, program executive for the Mars Exploration Rovers and for
NASA's participation in Mars Express at NASA Headquarters, Washington,
D.C. "Historically, there have been only three successful landings on
Mars. In the span of only one month, we may double that number, and
our knowledge of Mars may increase even more."
Mars Express is expected to release part of its payload, the Beagle 2
lander, on Dec. 19. On Christmas Eve (in U.S. time zones), Beagle 2
will parachute to the martian surface, and Mars Express will enter
orbit around the planet. Beagle 2 will use analytical tests and a
robotic arm to search for evidence of past or present life at its
landing site. The orbiter will use seven instruments to study Mars'
atmosphere, structure and geology. The science teams for Beagle 2, and
for every instrument on Mars Express, include U.S. researchers. Two
instruments on Mars Express have components from U.S. partners in the
mission.
The Beagle 2 team plans to use NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to relay
communications to Earth on the lander's arrival day and in subsequent
weeks.
The U.S. role in Mars Express includes navigational support and
software developed from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. and communications support from the JPL-managed Deep Space
Network, which operates antenna stations in California, Spain and
Australia. One of the Mars Express instruments, with U.S. components,
will use radar to seek evidence of underground water, either frozen or
liquid.
"This will be the first attempt to study layers far below Mars'
surface," said JPL's Dr. William Johnson, manager for the instrument,
which was built under the leadership of Dr.
Giovanni Picardi, University of Rome, La Sapienza. The instrument, the
Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding, is
designed to discern boundaries between layers as deep as 5 kilometers
(3 miles) under the surface. It will also examine the structure and
variability of the martian ionosphere, the top layer of the
atmosphere. The University of Iowa, Iowa City, built the transmitter
for the radar instrument. JPL built the receiver. Astro Aerospace,
Carpinteria, Calif., built the 40-meter (131-foot) antenna. Italy
provided the instrument's digital processing system and software and
integrated the parts.
The other Mars Express instrument with key NASA-funded components is
the Analyzer of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms. It will examine
interactions between the martian
atmosphere and the solar wind of charged particles speeding away from
the Sun. Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, built two
sensors for it, an electron spectrometer and an ion mass analyzer.
Europe provided important tools on NASA's twin Mars Exploration
Rovers. The German Space Agency and the Max Planck Institute for
Chemistry, Mainz, Germany, supplied each rover's alpha particle X-ray
spectrometer instrument. The German Space Agency and the University of
Mainz supplied the Mossbauer spectrometer. The Neils Bohr Institute,
Copenhagen, Denmark, supplied the magnet array for observation by
rover cameras. Plans call for Mars Express to relay signals from a
NASA rover at least once. In addition, Europeans make up about
one-sixth of the members of the rovers' science team. The rovers,
scheduled to land on Mars on Jan. 4 and on Jan. 25 (Universal time)
respectively, will seek evidence about whether the environment in two
regions might once have been capable of supporting life.
For information about NASA, visit: http://www.nasa.gov
http://www.nasa.gov/ .
For information about Mars Express visit:
http://sci.esa.int/home/marsexpress; about its radar experiment,
visit: http://www.marsis.com http://www.marsis.com/ .
For information about the Mars Exploration Rovers, visit:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer .
Mars Express is managed by the 15-nation European Space Agency science
and technology center at Noordwijk, Netherlands. JPL, a division of
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Odyssey
and Mars Exploration Rover missions for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C.
-end-
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