I think that sentence is assuming once samples are back Martian orbit. Though I wonder if the possible reworking of the ARM (for a Phobos/Deimos target) could do get two birds with one stone...

Hardware starts to come together Click to view attachment

Photo by Abigail Allwood, PI for PIXL instrument. Don't forget sourcing and crediting, folks. It's one thing that makes this a quality forum.

The rover could use a brush on her robot arm to clean Spirits solar panels to reboot Spirit.

Looks like the favorite is another crater, with actually verified lake: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/jez...sa-s-2020-rover

Its pronounced Yezero, by the way. I know the language, trust me

Here is a HiRISE/HRSC/CTX composite...



...and a zoomable 200 megapixel version...

Jezero Gigapan


*edit:updated with new version*

Very interesting site. For reference, a wide view of Jezero Crater:

Click to view attachment

(Source: http://www.leonarddavid.com/go-ahead-given...ils-of-mission/ )

The alluvial fan, superficially at least, looks like a crevasse splay from the main channel.

Click thru to see a video made with the same data...

My main concern is the numerous sand dunes which could render the movement of the rover across the crater floor somewhat difficult up to the the delta river deposit. Otherwise Jezero crater seems o be an excellent choice.

It seems to me that, in terms of potential biology, lakes on Mars are parallels of islands on Earth. Simply per the species-area relationship, most species on Earth are on continents rather than islands, and many species are physically isolated from islands. On Mars I would expect the bulk of any biology to have been in the northern ocean, with perhaps something going on around Hellas in the south. Lakes on Mars would be very isolated, like remote islands in the pacific, very physically isolated in terms of biology. Hellas would have been like Australia, but more isolated.

With this in mind, preserved biological remnants from the early Mars seem most likely to be found in deltaic sediments along the edges of the putative northern ocean. Alternatively, near the remnants of hot springs which would have been on the floor of that ocean. A location which combines access to both of these things would be ideal.

2018 is the Insight launch; this rover is locked in for 2020. The only other mission on schedule for next year is Red Dragon (I'm assuming there have been no delays).

My understanding - second hand, I don't have a direct line to SpaceX - is that 2018 is "off the table" now for Red Dragon. Too much other stuff going on. That gives them more time to get some instruments or experiments added to it.

Hrmmm... how would one compare the dunes near the delta to the ones traversed by Curiosity in Gale crater?

Jezero Crater and NE Syrtis are only about 50 km apart. Does anyone know if there's been an analysis of whether in an a long extended mission, the rover could go from one to another?

Oppy got to 44 kilometres two weeks ago, so not impossible. RTGs would start to decay after a while though limiting power in a few solar panels are immune to...

Another issue is this is a sample return mission, and if caches are scattered all over, future missions would have to replicate the traverse. Or else using up all the tubes at one location, and just using the onboard remote sensing instruments at the other. Not exactly optimal!

I presume that if something like this happened, the prime mission including sample caching would be completed in the primary site before heading for any secondary sites.

There may also be many interesting sites between the two primary sites. I expect that neither of the teams proposing either of these sites will talk about extended missions, but will instead focus on the advantage of their preferred site. That said, the team proposing the Columbia Hills site is discussing extended mission possibilities. I believe that this may be because the diversity of science in the Columbia Hills is less than at the other sites.

Mars 2020 rover still under strong support:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/03/16/trump...l-partnerships/

Robert

Not a farce, but a complex and intriguing issue. The original motivation appears to be the Planetary Science Decadal Survey requirement for the next Mars mission to support the Mars Sample Return mission. Unfortunately the budget does not support the followup missions with the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) so we are left with a quandary.

There are two ways to support the MAV, one is to have 2020 do all the roving and bring the samples to the MAV and the other way is to land another rover in addition to the MAV to pick up the samples. This is where it get interesting; the first case is a lot cheaper but, the 2020 rover has to survive long enough to be able to get to the MAV. The second case, landing another rover with the MAV, is a lot more expensive but more likely to succeed; however I suspect that Planetary scientists would be loath to land a second rover in the same place unless the potential was truly exceptional. Then there is the issue of degradation of the samples; the longer it takes to get the MAV to the 2020 location, the less compelling the samples become. At some point one has to wonder if we are sending a MAV with a rover, we might as well have the rover drill fresh samples.

There are indeed big determinations to be made on how to proceed, and it's unusual to have the execution begin before the planning has ended. But this seems quite viable… if the rocks sat on Mars for over a billion years, what's 10 or 20 more before we examine them on Earth? Is there some worry about forward contamination from the canister?

The return mechanisms are surely precious and need to be used as carefully as possible. If a rover does not manage to collect promising samples, it would be an extravagance to return those samples anyway.

I wonder if it would be possible for a return architecture to return samples from two locations with one return vehicle. If samples are returned to Mars orbit from two locations, the geometry would support the orbit being selected to overfly both locations. We could potentially have two orbiting sample canisters in almost the same orbit, allowing one return vehicle to collect both.

So I wonder about this architecture:

• Send rovers to promising locations, and cache the most promising samples at each.
• Continue this until at least two locations are deemed to have met the expectations of sufficient interest.
• Send surface-to-orbit missions to the two most promising locations (two of two, two of three, however it turns out) and send those samples into nearly identical locations in a very similar orbit. Perhaps even have them dock in Mars orbit.
• Launch the Earth-Mars orbit-Earth mission to retrieve those samples.

This minimizes risk by allowing for failures along the way, postponing future launches until the success of the preliminary missions is assured.

"At some point one has to wonder if we are sending a MAV with a rover, we might as well have the rover drill fresh samples."

The sample-collection rover and the 'fetch' rover would be very different - maybe nearly as different as MSL and MER. That is why the strategy makes sense.

Regarding multiple samples, that is why I favour caching samples on Phobos using an airbag-style landing system, and having them collected by the first human crew in an Apollo 10-style mission. Multiple samples could be collected, by multiple partners, over a decade or so, and all picked up at once.

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/1043.pdf

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/eposter/1043.pdf



Phil

So the Phobos caching thing......I see the attraction - but that costs a LOT of delta-V above just entering LMO, especially if you're not launching from an equatorial site..... and rendezvous with Phobos is probably trickier than just an LMO rendezvous . Just park all your samples in a sun sync polar orbit and picking them all up even with crew would be easier than having to rendezvous with and land on Phobos to collect them

(Just pitched Phobos cache as an idea to a JPL mission designer and traj analyst)

Yeah, the Oberth effect makes it more fuel efficient to do a departure burn or plane-change burn from a lower orbit. I guess the orbit would be a sunrise/sunset synchronous orbit? That would make it cheaper to depart vs a noon/midnight orbit.

PIA21635: NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Artist's Concept #1
Click to view attachment
Photojournal Page Link
Full res JPEG Link

I hope they release a 3D model soon.

No, the worry is about exposure to cosmic rays, solar wind, and day-night temperature cycles. Also perchlorates might winkle their way into the samples (unlikely). Of course, if the drill is only a few inches long or if the samples are very well shielded then the point may be moot. If not and the samples are coming from further underground then this could be a factor in breaking down any organic chemicals that might be in the samples.

Helicopter confirmed for the payload: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/mars-hel...t-rover-mission
Looks like deployment will be from the belly of the rover body. Just release, and then drive off to a safe distance?

Obviously some benefits to the Dragonfly Titan proposal in terms of getting experience with autonomous rotor-driven spacecraft, (thought liftoff on Titan would be a lot easier!) but also just plain cool! Selfies will be a lot easier to plan too...

I think you overestimate the level of cooperation and information flow between JPL and APL, even if the two vehicles had much in common other than having rotors.

That's true, and obviously there are many differences; one has to use its rotors for EDL in addition to the prime mission, carry scientific instruments, all after a multi-year cruise, while the other is a tech demonstration piggy-backing on another mission, and its own success or failure does not impact the 2020 Rover's objectives.
I was just thinking in terms of "space is space". Whether half an hour signal delay or several hours, neither will be controlled in real time by anything but an onboard computer, with really thin margins on mass and power. JAXA and NASA have cooperated on their respective asteroid sample return missions, (which are coincidentally flying at the same time), and there are some rather large differences between them. But anyway, this is mostly academic for now; looking forward to the Mars microphone picking up the whirr of the blades (3000 RPM!)

Please tell me they're fitting a camera on the helicopter.

Yes, this is the main point of the demonstration; being able to scout terrain ahead, with higher resolution than orbital imagery, both for engineering (planning safe drive routes) and science (spotting things too small for HiRise or not in line-of-sight to the rover).
Being able to inspect the entire rover is an obvious plus, (if they are permitted to fly close enough to avoid being a hazard)*, though I'm sure many EDL team members would like to see how their hardware fared too! With Curiosity pretty much everything fell into local low points in the terrain, and we never saw the heatshield, backshell, parachute, or skycrane from the ground. Mind, the current plan is for only 30 days of operations, it's not apparently planned to 'tag along' for the main mission.

Edit: *a bit tongue in cheek Mike! The forward facing camera would be plenty adequate for a distance view!

No freakin' way.

I just fell on the floor laughing!!!

JPL was concerned enough about the helicopter interface potentially taking down the rover that they gave that design to the Lockheed Martin Space avionics team. Our best engineer is working it, so I’ve been looking over his shoulder at the design.
I assumed there would be no moving parts in the deployment, but apparently the helicopter is held sideways against the belly, and then rotated 90 deg to vertical for deployment. I guess that makes sense on more consideration, this thing isn’t going to be THAT small, but I still don’t have a sense of scale between the two vehicles, how much clearance the stowed helicopter is going to get.

The new upgraded skycrane landing system should be able to avoid any unlucky rock sticking up, from what I recall?

There's no active hazard avoidance that I'm aware of. There's TRN but that still requires a priori knowledge of hazards from pre-existing orbital imagery. See https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/201...straints_v6.pdf

Here is a nice technical write-up of the Mars Helicopter

https://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/Publication...AA2018_0023.pdf

Two Cameras!

Helicopter test in simulated Mars surface atmosphere at JPL.

That's very impressive, esp. considering that they can't simulate 0.38g.

Voting at the landing site workshop just concluded. Looks like Jezero crater and Midway are preferred (either one can have an extended mission to the other). NE Syrtis a close second, but Columbia Hills is out.

Phil

There's a nicely detailed rendering of a Jezero-Midway traverse map in this recent Discover article.
Its unclear the reasons behind the potential path options shown, perhaps they are mostly engineering and timeline considerations, as other paths could turn out to be more productive scientifically, i'm personally hoping the landing would be in Jezero (to which i'm assuming the yellow circles do not delineate any landing constraint but simply highlight the areas of interest), then onward through to the Midway region and whats sure to be a laundry list of sites beyond.

I'm still mesmerized by that parachute test every time i see it.

I made a flight over 3 landing sites to Mars Rover 2020.

I use MRO/CTX b.w. images then add a color from Mars Expres HRSC camera and made model from DT4 (same orbit like color image).

Now I'm work from MRO/HiRISE more detailed images to Jezero and Midway sites.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yINcv96Tgb4

In Jezero crater landing elipse to NASA Mars Rover 2020 (color version)
I use MRO-HiRISE DTM and ortho images from
https://www.uahirise.org/dtm/dtm.php?ID=ESP_045994_1985


Flight cover about 60% of landing elipse (center elipse is almost in the center image)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK9edFndNr8
Click to view attachment


Two DTM's - I use this from the right DTEEC_045994_1985_046060_1985
Click to view attachment

Looks like Jezero has been chosen at the final site. Appropriate given that it means 'lake' in my native language!
Pronunciation tips: Ye-Ze-Roh. Ye as in 'Yep'. Ze as in Zeppelin, and Roh as in Robot!

Here is some Jezero work I made a while back...

200 megapixel portrait


Flyby animation

4k version on Youtube

It looks like a good design for totally flat terrains. I see no propellers protection against contact with rocks, and no ways to recover from a tilt due to landing with a leg on a rock. In a word, it does not look very robust to Murphy's law.

But I am curious to see the unfolding and deployment procedure.

I don't know about this, but I might expect a bit of hazard avoidance built in to protect against those problems.

Phil

I put together a CTX mosaic of Jezero and colorized it using data from Mars Express HRSC. The resolution mismatch leads to a lot of color artifacts near sharp boundaries, but it at least gives you a rough idea of the natural color variation within the scene. The full-resolution image is available at Flickr, and preserves the original ~6 m/px resolution of the CTX mosaic.


Jezero Crater

Thank very much! It's great.

Just curious, is Mars 2020 likely to be given another name in the future such as a name like Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity etc, or is Mars 2020 its final given name? I thought it seemed odd since it will be landing and doing its operations in 2021 and beyond.

NASA published a request for a partner to run a competition to name the 2020 rover... Here is a link to the press release. I may have missed it, but I've not seen the partner named yet. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-seeki...next-mars-rover

NASA planetary missions are often initially referred to by their target world and the year of projected launch.