NASA aerospace engineers have begun assembling a new rover that will travel to the Red Planet in July 2020 using the Atlas 5 launch vehicle. The assembly of the new rover will be carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Roughly, the assembly process for a new autonomous Martian scientific laboratory will take a year and a half.
“Parts and equipment for the rover come not only from different cities in the United States, but also from all over the world,” David Gruel, head of assembly and testing of the planetary rover at JPL, commented to Space.com.
The source notes that, in particular, several scientific instruments were manufactured in France, Norway and Spain.
One of the main tasks that will be set for the new Mars 2020 rover (the name is most likely a working one, and a more suitable designation the rover will most likely receive after its assembly is completed) will be to search for signs of life on our planetary neighbor.
According to experts from NASA, "the device will investigate the geological structure of Mars, the composition of the atmosphere, assess natural resources and the threats that people may face during the upcoming expeditions to this planet."
One of the scientific instruments of the new rover will be designed to obtain oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide. In addition, the autonomous Martian laboratory will take soil and stones, which in the future, during the exploration of the planet, will be sent to Earth for further analysis.
The new rover will be the size of a small car. Its length will be about 3 meters (excluding the mechanical manipulator arm), width - 2.7 meters, and height - 2.2 meters. Moreover, its weight will be about 1050 kilograms, which is about 150 kilograms more than Curiosity, which has spent more than 2000 Earth days on Mars. By the way, when developing Mars 2020, it was decided to borrow a lot of units and parts from the latter.
NASA has not yet made the final choice of the landing site for the new Mars rover, but the most likely are Jezero crater, Gusev crater and the northeastern part of the low shield volcano Bolshoi Sirte.
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Nikolay Khizhnyak