Ultimate Mars Challenge: NOVA 11/14/12

[neufer]

NOVA: Ultimate Mars Challenge: Airing November 14, 2012 at 9 pm on PBS

<<Why go back to Mars? Far from dead, Mars holds untold potential. Nearly half a century of Mars exploration has yielded tantalizing clues that Mars may once have harbored life—and may harbor it still. The extraordinary landing of a revolutionary rover named Curiosity—which successfully touched down inside the Gale Crater—means we have wheels down on the planet once again, in the form of the most sophisticated robot ever to rove the Mars surface. Will NASA's bold mission and this marvel of technology answer some of our biggest questions and usher in a new golden age of exploration? NOVA goes behind the scenes on NASA’s quest to solve the riddles of the red planet.>>

[BMAONE23]

we ought to send similar rovers to the surface of the larger Jovian moons and Saturnian moons. The terrain might be too hazardous to get to the Tiger Stripe region of Enceladus but much of the remainder would be flat enugh. And the light/dark regions of Iapetus would be interesting up close, not to mention roving around Titan

[rstevenson]

I certainly agree, but the rovers will need to be a lot more autonomous before we can do that. Mars is only about 4 light-minutes away from Earth, but Saturn is about 90 light-minutes away. Saying Oops! won't do you much good if it takes 90 minutes to get to the rover.

Of course, if we sent along an intrepid explorer to guide the rovers from nearby... ...

Rob

[Chris Peterson]

I certainly agree, but the rovers will need to be a lot more autonomous before we can do that. Mars is only about 4 light-minutes away from Earth, but Saturn is about 90 light-minutes away. Saying Oops! won't do you much good if it takes 90 minutes to get to the rover. ;-)

Not much practical difference. The Mars rover is completely autonomous with respect to its ability to avoid obstacles and protect itself. The technical requirements between the two wouldn't be substantially different in terms of computational power. The environmental conditions on the moons of gas giants are generally much worse, though.

[neufer]

we ought to send similar rovers to the surface of the larger Jovian moons and Saturnian moons. The terrain might be too hazardous to get to the Tiger Stripe region of Enceladus but much of the remainder would be flat enough. And the light/dark regions of Iapetus would be interesting up close, not to mention roving around Titan

Rovers to Mars could use a heat shield plus parachute to slow down
from interplanetary travel to just ~100m/s where airbags or retrorockets could then take over.

Large airless moons don't have that advantage:
Iapetus has an escape velocity of 573 m/s and an outer space to orbit deceleration velocity of 1352+ m/s
and Enceladus has an escape velocity of 239 m/s and an outer space to orbit deceleration velocity of 5231+ m/s

(A flyby through an Enceladus geyser with a return capsule would probably make more sense.)

[bystander]

Video available at http://video.pbs.org/video/2303491567

[Moonlady]

I certainly agree, but the rovers will need to be a lot more autonomous before we can do that. Mars is only about 4 light-minutes away from Earth, but Saturn is about 90 light-minutes away. Saying Oops! won't do you much good if it takes 90 minutes to get to the rover.

Not much practical difference. The Mars rover is completely autonomous with respect to its ability to avoid obstacles and protect itself. The technical requirements between the two wouldn't be substantially different in terms of computational power. The environmental conditions on the moons of gas giants are generally much worse, though.

If there comes a time when a vehicle is send to Jupiter's moons and the rover needs a driver, I am in, I drive good and I like heights...

Hmm the environmental conditions are maybe not that much the problem, it is the money that is needed to go there. Anyone calculated how much would that cost?
How many billions?

[Doum]

Moonlady, the environnemental condition around jupiter are deadly.

"The fact that Jupiter’s titanic magnetic field creates enough radiation on Europa’s surface to kill a human in five minutes is just sort of a perk. The cold would get you first." It's better to stay away i think. Unles you have a good sheilding.

I extract this sentence from this text.

http://kagmi.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/a ... es-europa/

[Moonlady]

Well, I pondered and I think five minutes may be enough to get interesting results, and that I dont make it back means no energy and supply for traveling back, this
makes it more economic.