An unprecedented look at
broken and busted hardware on Mars is exciting spacecraft engineers.
NASA's Opportunity rover
is edging closer to the very heat shield that protected the Mars machinery as
it plowed through the red planet's atmosphere last January.
After six months of rolling
about inside Endurance Crater, the Opportunity robot is now traveling across
the flatland of its landing area, Meridiani Planum.
Driving out of Endurance
Crater, the rover examined some of its own tracks that it had laid down prior
to entering the crater. It compared them side-by-side with fresh tracks in order
to observe any weathering effects in the intervening 200 sols, or Mars days.
Opportunity is now trekking
toward an engineering exam of its heat shield, which is located about 220 yards
(200 meters) from the edge of Endurance Crater.
Charring challenged
Checking out the trashed
heat shield is of particular interest to Rob Manning, former Entry, Descent
and Landing Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover project at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"Based on arc-jet testing
and mathematical models, we expect a certain amount of charring of the heat
shield material," Manning told SPACE.com.
But Manning said that even
the best testing facilities on Earth can only test small samples of the heat
shield in approximate Mars-like conditions.
"Ironically, we have
never been able to absolutely prove that our models that predict how much charring
occurs during a Mars entry are correct. An observation of the cross-section
of Opportunity's heat shield material would help us confirm our models,"
Manning explained.
Close-up pictures
Manning said that by using
the Opportunity's microscopic imager on the end of the robotic arm, an attempt
will be made to take close-up pictures of broken places on the heat shield where
a cross section of the heat shield is visible.
"We will also take
pictures of the overall burn patterns on the heat shield. However we will not
know until Opportunity gets there if any of these observations are possible,"
Manning added.
"But if we are successful,
this will be the first time we have ever directly seen how well heat shields
have worked at Mars," Manning said. "This information might help us design better
and more efficient heat shields in the future."
advertisement
