Thanks a lot for clarifying this!

So why bother with a sterilized drill at all?
What a bizarre Catch-22, but this one is real.

So that any signatures that are identified can be certified as not being of terrestrial origin.

Ah, of course. stone seemed to be implying something else.

No I don't think Stone were implying anything special but not being fully fluent in English while at least partially attempting to follow the rule already quoted.

It is very important not to contaminate any sample with organic material, spores or even organisms.
And quite likely that there will be more organic material below the surface, yet we will still need to figure out the where it originated etc.

I do think Stone hinted at one important fact, and that is that dormant specimens of the holy grail of organics the scientists are looking for do not last 3 billion years, and the longevity decrease with complexity.

One example of that is that samples from self-propelling and navigating specimens held in relatively benign environments in museums show that bad damage to the circuity that revival is not possible even after a mere 100 years without reconstruction work to the blueprints.

Again I refer to my message from just a few posts earlier. Let's be careful please.

This is the law.

Special regions are regions in which earth like microbes can survive or even grow. Making any attempt in the future to look for any organics or life useless in a special region contaminated before by a previous mission. It is only to protect the science of future missions.

There is no instrument on board of ExoMars which can detect 3000 microbes level. So even the non sterile and unclean part of the rover would be sufficient in this respect. The organic contamination on the outside of the rover is high enough to be detected by the instrument, but this is CC and not PP. Honeycomb and Kapton tape are really dirty stuff. The countless Epotecs are even worse.

Info about the Navigation and Localization Cameras of Exomars. How does work the "calibration cube"?

I don't know about the Naptec one, but ours was similar to this one: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/mars/im...ib_cube_big.gif It allows measuring intrinsic (such as optical center position, radial distortion, etc.. for each camera) and extrinsic (such as optical axis orientation relative to each other, relative position etc.. for the camera set) parameters. JPL typically uses flat calibration panels, but the concept is the same.

More than you want to know about camera calibration: http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...6/1/98-1739.pdf

Paolo

I can indeed understand the value of such a test assembly, but I have the impression that Neptec's "calibration cube" is the small cube in the middle of the two cameras!?

Click to view attachment

Click for details Rusian - European spacecraft to go on Martian mission in Jan 2016
A spacecraft built for the Russian-European ExoMars project will begin its voyage to Mars in January 2016, and the spacecraft will arrive in the Martian orbit in October 2016. It will be carrying a number of our and European instruments and a small craft, which will be airdropped to the planet.

It is a good step for the first Rusia-Europa experience of landing on Mars. This mission would be cheaper in order to test techniques of entry into the Martian atmosphere, descent, landing and conduct a small scientific research.

Checking out Schiaparelli’s landing site
the site has been selected for its smoothness and lack of hazards, but it still amazes me how close to Opportunity it is. I hope Oppy is still operational when Schiaparelli lands. Any chances we are going to see the first Martian observations of an artificial meteor?

You're right Paolo, landing ellipse actually covers/touch all the traverse map after Victoria and its centre is 55 km from rover probable future position (around Cape Tribulation) so there is an excellent opportunity to picture the entry event! Moreover, ellipse major axis encounter Oppy so orientation is perfect for picture taking with PanCam in order to have best resolution (considering also that, shortly before arrival, ellipse should shrink). Eventually, we could barely see also the parachute during descent... (resolution of PanCam is 15 m/pixel at 55 km distance). The only concern is related to local time, hopefully not too close to sunset (in order to avoid direct sunlight in the FOV)... any hint on this information?

I made a quick check of the literature on the Schiaparelli EDM. local time at landing seems to be early afternoon. around 14 local time

Seems not bad to me, let's hope atmospheric tau will be low too (no dust storms!)...

First ExoMars rover landing site selection workshop underway: http://exploration.esa.int/mars/53190-1st-...ction-workshop/

Any updates on which sites are under selection?

the usually reliable Jonathan Amos says:

The journal Nature's website reports that the list of candidate landing sites have been narrowed to four. In a replay of the choices from the landing site discussions for the MER and Curiosity rovers, the sites are divided by whether they have strong spectral signatures for water-modified minerals (Mawrth Vallis and Oxia Planum) or geomorphic evidence for past flowing water (Hypanis Vallis and Oxia Palus).

Mawrth Vallis and Oxia Planum are both fairly far north, enough so that receiving enough sunlight to survive a winter might be challenging. I've read that the rover will have "novel batteries and heaters" (not sure if the heaters are also novel). Does anyone have a link to more information? Also, I have a vague recollection that the rover can tilt its solar panels, which would be useful to maximize solar exposure. Is my memory playing tricks on me?

Is Schiaparelli going to carry a camera? I could swear I've read that it was, but I can't find any reference to it anywhere.

as far as I know, just a descent "webcam". see also http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=193748

This is disappointing. Since InSight will have already landed, it will be a record fourth (assuming Oppy and Curiosity are still with us) operational lander on Mars, and I had visions of four views on the same day (unless the webcam is mounted in a way that it can actually see something on the surface).

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/7B.1_Lore...%20overview.pdf

Click to view attachment

"HP" means Herschel/Planck. According to this abstract DeCa will take 15 images, separated by 1.5 seconds.

Okay, so ESA will spend a lot of money on an EDL demonstrator, and has no plans to have a camera aboard the lander which can document the post-landing state of the lander???

So, if it lands and they get, say, 30 minutes of telemetry and then the thing goes dead, with no immediate check-out imaging they may not have a clue as to what caused a post-landing failure?

To me, if you want to verify a landing system, you need more than just basic survival to the surface to evaluate whether or not the landing system will be able to support landing the rover. You need to make sure that your actual landing systems have worked, that you didn't, say, bend the gear or provide too little clearance or overestimated your system's ability to deal with landing with one paw on a big rock, etc. There is no better way, IMHO, to answer those questions than to take a quick deck pan to see exactly what kind of shape your lander is in after it sets down.

Spending lots of millions of Euros to verify a landing system and then not providing a basic means of actually verifying that the landing worked as planned is, IMHO, being very penny-wise and pound-foolish.

-the other Doug (with my shield, not yet upon it)

It is what it is - no point complaining and moaning about it.

The original proposal for the current payload included a possible wide angle camera that could see the surface (it might double as the descent camera, not sure).


It was also listed on a description of the model payload and clearly stated to not be part of the DREAMS payload. But since then I can't find any reference to it or its deletion. So it is what it is, but I'm not sure what what it is, well, is.

Depending on the resolution of the descent camera, the last few images a few meters above the ground, and before the jets kick up dust, may give a much better characterization of the final landing site than a series of panoramic shots post landing looking at the total number of pixels to be returned. Especially if the landing is in the late afternoon or early morning where shadows will really help interpret an overhead scene.

Indeed - we don't really know what it is - which renders comment even more meaningless.

And of course there's also HiRISE to view the landing site; it won't be a mystery like Beagle 2 no matter what happens.

https://www.cospar-assembly.org/abstractcd/...0.2-0041-14.pdf


This links to an abstract from the COSPAR meeting coming up in Moscow in a couple of weeks. The abstracts can be found through the meeting site:

https://www.cospar-assembly.org/

This specific abstract is about a microrover or nanokhod for the ExoMars lander (2018 mission). There are lots of others including some on results of Chang'E 3 in the Moon section. Worth a browse!

Phil

Thanks, Phil.

Okay, I'm officially confused. Is this nanorover gonna be tethered to the descent stage or something while the main rover goes elsewhere? What is the current baseline design of this mission? Have they passed CDR yet? The ESA site doesn't seem to have any current information.

I believe it would be attached to the lander itself ( think the MER lander ) - as there are artists impressions that show the lander to not be a dead piece of hardware post-rover departure, but a standalone spacecraft of its own with solar panels etc.

That's right, the lander is supposed to operate (for a year, possibly) on its own after the big rover leaves. This little nanokhod will be tethered and will allow a little bit of extra exploration to be done at the landing site.

Phil

Any idea, whether this applies also to the 2016 EDM mission?

No. This is 2018. A Russian lander with a Russian nanorover ("based on a Russian concept"). The 2016 lander is just ESA.

Phil

Thanks, Doug & Phil. It's an exciting concept just as a tech demo on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't think anyone's tried to fly a tethered 'rover' of any sort since the Soviets back in the 70s.

Still wondering when they're gonna nail everything down in CDR, though. Time's starting to get short.

I've found it hard to get information on the Russian station that will operate from the ExoMars 2018 descent stage. The best I've been able to learn is that an announcement to select instruments is expected this year.

The rover sounds cool, but a careful reading of the abstract suggests that it may be one of the "instruments" to be proposed rather than a decided on component.

I'm hoping that the Russian station carries copies of InSight's seismometer and heat probe instruments. Both are European instruments, and that would help selection, and measurements from a second location would be useful. However, deploying them might require a dedicated arm that might be a capability to far for the station.

Yeah, it's a pity! Inside ExoMars - Quarterly Newsletter is abandoned and the Test Campaign Journal no longer updated. The same apparently happened to the BepiColombo Test Campaign Journal.

On Friday Jorge Vago talked about the two missions at the 8th conference on Mars about ExoMars 2016 and 2018. The Russian landing platform is in very early stage and the instruments and equipment is not selected yet. The EDL is already in a good shape and the instruments are selected and the structure is already built. He hinted that there might be a camera on the EDL, so lets wait what they come up with.

It is sad that there is no good updating of the documents for the public, but I see that most of the people who might know what should be written very involved to finish hardware, and in the decision to do hardware or documents I would also do the hardware.

According to this source, ExoMars will "likely" miss the 2018 launch window and if so, would have to wait for a 2020 launch/2021 arrival, and the mission is not guaranteed to occur at all.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/exomars2018_2014.html

At least the 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter launch is holding. I doubt the rover will be canceled, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a minor-to-moderate descoping of the payload in reaction to the funding problems.

Four landing sites for the ESA's Mars rover indicated on a new ESA page dated Oct 1, Mawrth Vallis, Oxia Planum, Hypanis Vallis and Aram Dorsum all close to the equator and all in areas with plenty of signs of flowing water in the early history of the planet.
The choice still to be decided but the text give a hint that Oxia Planum might be a favourite.

Interesting that the candidate landing site maps show landing ellipses for both 2018 and 2020 launches. It's good that they're ready for all contingencies.

I am trying to open the report but the "link to publication" at the ESA website doesn't seem to work for me. Could anyone open and download the report? Thank you.

ADMIN: It downloaded fine from the "link to publication" link for me. The file is 15.1mb and in PDF format. Make sure you have Acrobat available to read the file.

the link works now.

In the context of the discussion of wheel slip observed for MSL, here a video showing a "wheel walking" approach intended to overcome the slip in sandy terrain.

Just some forum management info: I have established a subforum for the ExoMars program, and split out a topic for ExoMars TGO launch preparations, now that the spacecraft is being assembled. It may be appropriate at some point in the near future to establish separate threads for the EDM and the ExoMars 2018 (or maybe now 2020) rover, but we can wait for some news.

Now that the ExoMars Orbiter has successfully launched, we will soon have three different orbiters that are intended to map the distribution of Mars' atmospheric composition. I'm unsure of their relative strengths, but it's logical to think about their data will complement one another's.

An easy comparison is between their orbits…

MAVEN: 150x6,200 km (4.5 hours)
Mangalyaan: 420x77,000 km (73 hours)
ExoMars TGO: 400x400 km (120 min)

MAVEN is not expected to map the lower atmosphere's methane, but the other two are intended to do so. Obviously, ExoMars has a much shorter period, and should be better at determining temporal variations, which we know exist thanks to measurements from the surface made by Curiosity. Mangalyaan will perform full-disk methane scans at apoaeion, while ExoMars will be making more localized measurements. I'm not sure how their spectral resolution will compare.

The different missions could complement one another both in the search for methane and more generally. I don't know when the results will begin to be available, but 2017 might provide our first specific knowledge of the spatial and temporal variation of methane on Mars, and give us some landing sites for a follow-the-methane strategy.

TGO will initially enter a 300x96,000 km high elliptic orbit much like Mangalyaan and then slowly aerobrake over the next 12 months into the 400 km circular orbit. Full science phase only begins after circularization.

I understand the Shiaparelli lander is due to set down in south Meridiani. Is there any possibility that the Opportunity rover might be able to observe part of the descent.

It would be really tricky; the timing would have to be perfect, and at any rate, I doubt the camera's are good enough to resolve something that small. I don't doubt that HiRISE on MRO can manage it (see my avatar for proof)!