Space

NASA’s next Mars rover will pave the way for humans

The Mars 2020 rover sits in the clean room, ready for testing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Published

5 years ago

January 27, 2020

Amy Thompson

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to land on the red planet in February 2021, and when it does, it will touch down in Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake that existed 3.5 billion years ago. The next generation rover, which will get an official name soon, will build on the success of the robotic explorers who came before it by collecting the first samples of Mars for a future return to Earth.

But the new rover will also lay the groundwork for future human exploration by testing new technologies.

The Mars 2020 rover, which looks nearly identical to the Curiosity rover that landed in 2012, will begin its mission exploring Jezero Crater. The six-wheeled rover is equipped with a suite of instruments designed to help it look for signs of life called biosignatures.

NASA believes that Mars was habitable sometime in its past. The inhospitable desert-like planet we see today was not always the case. Mars’ once ample atmosphere eroded over time, stripped away by solar particles, resulting in the thin atmosphere we see today.

But so far, we haven’t been able to detect any real signs of ancient life yet. The rover’s team thinks that its specialized suite of instruments will change that.

The twin Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) were tasked with finding evidence of water, and they were successful right out of the gate. The Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) was designed to understand habitability and if the conditions were right for life. Now, the Mars 2020 rover will take that one step further and search for actual signs of life.

Artist rendition depicting the early Martian environment (right) versus the Mars we see today (left). Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The 2020 rover will do so by drilling into its surroundings and extracting samples that will be returned to Earth at a later time. Returning the samples is a challenge that NASA is already starting to tackle. The agency estimates that the earliest it can send a mission to fetch the rover’s samples would be some time around 2026 or 2027.

In the meantime, 2020 will be busy sciencing the heck out of Mars to search for microbial life as well as testing out technologies that future human missions will rely on.

Here’s how four of those instruments will work.

Terrain Relative Navigation

Landing on Mars is tricky. To date, only about half of the missions attempted have successfully touched down on the red planet. The 2020 rover will be equipped with a specialized feature to help it avoid any potential hazards in the landing zone.

Past missions, like Curiosity, needed a landing spot that was free of debris (like rocks, boulders, etc). But 2020 will be able to navigate around them. That’s because the rover is equipped with a unique lander vision system. This system take pictures during the parachute descent stage. It then compares those images to an onboard map.

A view of how the terrain-relative navigation works. Credit: NASA/JPL_Caltech

The computer matches the map (which is created from orbital imagery), to create a guide that can identify landmarks such as craters and mountains.

The system then ranks landing sites based on safety, and can even identify a hazard. The Mars 2020 mission will be the first to test out this new system. If all goes well, it will be used on future missions, including human missions to Mars and even the moon.

MOXIE

Astronauts traveling to Mars will need oxygen to breathe and to use as rocket fuel. However, hauling it with the other cargo is expensive and not a viable solution. The Mars 2020 rover is equipped with an instrument on called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE for short).

MOXIE will convert carbon dioxide (a gas that’s abundant on Mars) into the oxygen, which astronauts can use as needed. 2020 is equipped with a small, prototype version of the equipment needed for future human missions.

The team will study how the experiment performs and use that data to scale up the technology to use on subsequent missions. But how will it work?

MOXIE can only run for a few hours at a time, and only about once a month. (That’s because the system uses a full day’s worth of rover power each time it runs.) Humans use about 20 grams per hour of oxygen and MOXIE can only produce about half of that.

In order to support a crew of 4-6 astronauts and be able to generate propellant, future iterations of MOXIE will need to produce about 200 times that amount of oxygen.

MEDA

The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer, aka MEDA, is a suite of sensors designed to study the Martian weather, as well as dust and radiation and how they change over the Martian seasons.

NASA is trying to better understand dust storms and other Martian weather phenomenon. Credit: NASA

Day and nighttime temperatures on Mars can fluctuate by as much as 80 or 90 degrees. MEDA will help scientists track those changes as well as measure radiation from the surface, to understand how much the sun heats the air. This solar heating causes changes in the Martian wind and can help scientists better understand the Martian water cycle.

Understanding the current weather patterns and environment could also lead to a better understanding of Mars’s history and shed light on how it transitioned from a warm, habitable planet into the dusty, cold desert we see today.

RIMFAX

The Mars 2020 rover will be equipped with a ground-penetrating radar instrument: Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment, or RIMFAX.

The Korolev crater on Mars as seen by Mars Express. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

Scientists hope that RIMAX will help them study the history of Jezero Crater by peering below the surface. With the instrument’s help, scientists will be able to look at subsurface rock and ice. To date, only orbital observations have been made of the Martian polar ice, but this will increase our understanding of the planet’s inner geology.

The Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to launch in July of 2020, and will land on the Martian surface six months later. If all goes according to plan, we may finally be able to answer the question of whether or not Mars once hosted life.

News

SpaceX readies to rescue astronauts from International Space Station

Published

24 hours ago

March 14, 2025

Joey Klender

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is readying to launch the Crew-10 mission this evening, which will bring home U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck on the International Space Station for nine months.

SpaceX is working alongside NASA to bring the two astronauts home, and all systems and weather conditions are looking ideal to launch the mission this evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

All systems are looking good and weather is exceptional for tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of @NASA‘s Crew-10 to the @Space_Station → https://t.co/VPdhVwQFNJ pic.twitter.com/wZ9LvZAnYn
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2025

Boeing was originally tasked with the rescue mission.

The company sent a Starliner aircraft to the ISS in late September in an effort to bring Williams and Wilmore home. However, malfunctioning thrusters and other issues on the Starliner aircraft prevented NASA from giving the green light to the astronauts to board and come home.

SpaceX was then tasked with bringing the two home, and it appears they will be on their way shortly.

The launch was intended to occur on Wednesday, but a last-minute problem with the rocket’s ground systems forced SpaceX and NASA to delay until at least Friday. Things are looking more ideal for a launch this evening.

The launch is targeted for 7:03 p.m. ET, but another backup opportunity is available tomorrow, March 15, at 6:41 p.m.

SpaceX writes about the Dragon spacecraft that will be used for the mission:

“The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew NASA’s Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 missions to and from the space station. This will be the second flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched the SES 03b mPOWER-e mission. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.”

The mission will not only aim to bring the two astronauts who have been stranded for nine months home, but it will also conduct new research to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

If Crew-10 launches at the planned time this evening, it will dock to the ISS at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night.

News

SpaceX explains reasoning for Starship 7 upper stage loss

Published

2 weeks ago

February 26, 2025

Joey Klender

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is set to launch its eighth test flight of the Starship rocket this Friday. Ahead of the most recent test in what could be the most revolutionary spaceflight program since NASA’s Apollo, SpaceX is clearing the air about what went wrong during its previous test flight, which resulted in the loss of the second stage during its ascension.

On January 16, SpaceX successfully launched Starship while also completing its second successful catch of the lower-stage booster.

However, the flight did not go as smoothly as initially anticipated, as the company lost Starship’s upper stage roughly eight minutes and twenty seconds into flight.

Now, the company is clarifying what happened that led to the demise of the upper stage, which SpaceX has identified with the recognition of “flashes” that occurred after vehicle separation.

SpaceX completes second catch of lower stage, but loses Starship

SpaceX says that a flash was observed roughly two minutes into its burn after vehicle separation. The flash, along with sensors that was a pressure rise in the attic, indicated a leak:

“Approximately two minutes into its burn, a flash was observed in the aft section of the vehicle near one of the Raptor vacuum engines. This aft section, commonly referred to as the attic, is an unpressurized area between the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank and the aft heatshield. Sensors in the attic detected a pressure rise indicative of a leak after the flash was seen.”

This was not the only flash that was observed. Two minutes after the first, another flash was seen, but this one was followed by sustained fires in the attic. These fires caused Starship’s engines to perform a controlled shutdown:

“These eventually caused all but one of Starship’s engines to execute controlled shut down sequences and ultimately led to a loss of communication with the ship. Telemetry from the vehicle was last received just over eight minutes and 20 seconds into flight.”

SpaceX clarified that Starship was destroyed and communication with the ship was lost before it was able to initiate any destruct rules for its Autonomous Flight Safety System. The company said this was “fully healthy when communication was lost.”

It went on to say that the “most probable root cause” of the loss was likely due to an environment not seen during testing:

“The most probable root cause for the loss of ship was identified as a harmonic response several times stronger in flight than had been seen during testing, which led to increased stress on hardware in the propulsion system. The subsequent propellant leaks exceeded the venting capability of the ship’s attic area and resulted in sustained fires.”

Nevertheless, Starship will launch for the eighth time soon, with CEO Elon Musk noting that the most likely date will be Friday. This could be the second of potentially 25 Starship launches planned for 2025.

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Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

News

SpaceX Starship’s next test flight gets target date – Here’s when it could lift off

Published

3 weeks ago

February 21, 2025

Joey Klender

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Starship will soon be lifting off for its eighth test flight, according to federal airspace advisory listings, as the Elon Musk-headed company will look to rebound from its most recent launch that ended in the destruction of its rocket.

SpaceX has listed its launch window as starting on Wednesday, February 26, at 5:30 p.m. EST. The company will look to launch between then and on any of the various backup opportunities that will be available through Thursday, March 6.

Coming off of what is one of its most eventful missions yet with the seventh Starship launch, the company is going to look to improve in one facet while aiming to repeat another. First, SpaceX said it is aiming to complete yet another catch of the first-stage booster, something it has now accomplished on two other occasions.

However, the last launch also resulted in the complete loss of the rocket itself, which was destroyed during its ascension phase. Debris from the exploded rocket fell over the Caribbean island of Turks and Caicos, lighting up the sky in what was a stunning display of a learning experience for the aerospace company:

?Absolutely insane video of Starship coming down over Turks & Caicospic.twitter.com/28wfgdKJuN
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 16, 2025
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The only thing that would potentially delay Starship’s next launch is the lack of closure to the previous investigation, which dealt with finding the reasoning for the rocket’s explosion.

SpaceX aimed to explain what happened shortly after the destruction of Starship after the seventh test flight:

“Following stage separation, the Starship upper stage successfully lit all six Raptor engines and performed its ascent burn to space. Prior to the burn’s completion, telemetry was lost with the vehicle after approximately eight and a half minutes of flight. Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly with debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas.”

Musk also said that a leak of oxygen or fuel in the cavity above the ship engine firewall could have been responsible for the loss.

He also expected Starship to return to launch in February.

Need accessories for your Tesla? Check out the Teslarati Marketplace:

Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.