A Rover Pit Stop at JPL
NASA |
JPL-Caltech |
Mars 2020 | 2019 Jul 12
Constructing an exquisitely complex vehicle like the Mars 2020 rover takes serious teamwork. On June 13, 2019, more than a dozen "bunny suit"-clad engineers rolled past another milestone in the clean room of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, when they integrated the rover's legs and wheels.
The Mars 2020 team could pass for a pit crew in this video clip, which has been sped up by 300% and focuses on the major activities that took place the day the wheels were installed. ...
Mars 2020 Rover: T-Minus One Year and Counting
NASA |
JPL-Caltech |
Mars 2020 | 2019 Jul 17
The launch period for NASA's Mars 2020 rover opens exactly one year from today, July 17, 2020, and extends through Aug. 5, 2020. The mission will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and land at Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. ...
Fueling of Mars 2020 Rover Power System Begins
NASA |
JPL-Caltech |
Mars 2020 | 2019 Jul 24
NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, has given the go-ahead to begin fueling the Mars 2020 rover's Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG. The generator will power the rover and help keep it warm while exploring the Red Planet. ...
Essentially a nuclear battery, an MMRTG can provide about 110 watts of electrical power to a spacecraft and its science instruments at the beginning of a mission. The excess heat from the generator can also serve to keep spacecraft systems warm in cold environments. In all, 27 past U.S. space missions have used radioisotope power — from the Viking missions on Mars to the Voyager spacecraft entering interplanetary space to, most recently, the Curiosity rover on Mars and the New Horizons spacecraft that sailed past Pluto.
MMRTGs work by converting heat from the natural decay of radioisotope materials into electricity. The generators consist of two major elements: a heat source that contains plutonium-238 (Pu-238) and thermocouples that convert the plutonium's decay heat energy to electricity. The process of loading the heat source into the MMRTG, which the Department of Energy (DOE) manufactured, is timed to a mission's launch date. The Mars 2020 fueling process has been initiated thanks to the continued progress constructing the rover and the spacecraft that will get it there. ...
Mars 2020 Rover Does Biceps Curls
NASA |
JPL-Caltech |
Mars 2020 | 2019 Jul 26
The robotic arm on NASA's Mars 2020 rover does not have deltoids, triceps or biceps, but it can still curl heavy weights with the best. In this time-lapse video, taken July 19, 2019, in the clean room of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds' (40 kilograms') worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to a stowed configuration.
The rover's arm includes five electrical motors and five joints (known as the shoulder azimuth joint, shoulder elevation joint, elbow joint, wrist joint and turret joint). The rover's turret includes HD cameras, the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (
SHERLOC) science instrument, the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (
PIXL), and a percussive drill and coring mechanism. ...
MEDLI2 Installation on Mars 2020 Aeroshell Begins
NASA |
JPL-Caltech |
Mars 2020 | 2019 Aug 02
Hardware installed onto NASA's
Mars 2020 entry vehicle this week will help to increase the safety of future Mars landings.
Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA's
Artemis lunar exploration plans will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028. NASA will use its
Moon missions along with robotic missions to Mars to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
The Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2 (
MEDLI2) project developed a suite of sensors that will measure aerothermal environments and the performance of thermal protection system (TPS) material during the entry phase on the Mars 2020 mission. Engineers installed the first batch of items delivered by MEDLI2 onto the heat shield of the entry vehicle this week. The aeroshell of the entry vehicle consists of a heat shield and backshell and will protect the Mars 2020 rover in transit from Earth to Mars and during the entry through the atmosphere of Mars on its way to the surface. ...
NASA 'Optometrists' Verify Mars 2020 Rover's 20/20 Vision
NASA |
JPL-Caltech |
Mars 2020 | 2019 Aug 05
Equipped with visionary science instruments, the Mars 2020 rover underwent an "eye" exam after several cameras were installed on it. The rover contains an armada of imaging capabilities, from wide-angle landscape cameras to narrow-angle high-resolution zoom lens cameras. ...
To perform the calibration, the 2020 team imaged target boards that feature grids of dots, placed at distances ranging from 1 to 44 yards (1 to 40 meters) away. The target boards were used to confirm that the cameras meet the project's requirements for resolution and geometric accuracy. The cameras tested included two Navcams, four Hazcams, the SuperCam and the two Mastcam-Z cameras. ...