Technology for Mars Express
The development of
technology makes Mars exploration possible. Current missions are links in
a chain of innovation from the past to the future. They rely on previous
technologies created for other spacecraft and in turn contribute new
technologies for missions of tomorrow.
The European Space Agency named this mission Mars Express because
engineers were able to pioneer faster and more flexible ways building the
spacecraft and producing other technologies that make the mission possible.
Mars Express is making maximum use of pre-existing technologies and
technologies developed for Rosetta, a mission that will explore a comet at
close quarters by orbiting it and sending a lander onto the comet to
understand its icy nucleus. By using these technologies, the European
Space Agency was able to cut mission design and development time from
about six years to four years.
U.S. Participation in Technology Development
Technologies contributed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory include:
- the transmitter
and receiver subsystems on the MARSIS instrument, as well as its antenna
- the electron
and ion spectrometers for the ASPERA instrument
- software known
as SPICE that provides supplemental data (e.g., the spacecraft's
position, the direction to the sun, instrument specifications and
other data that increase the accuracy of data analysis) to the
Planetary Data System, an online library where planetary data is
stored and made accessible to scientists worldwide [more about SPICE]
- software that
converts data from the HRSC camera into a format that enables
U.S. scientists to conduct their research and that puts it into a
compatible format with the Planetary Data System so it can be archived
NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory also conducted communication interoperability studies for
NASA and ESA orbiters and landers at Mars. This contribution will enable
NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter to serve as a back-up communications
relay for the Beagle-2 lander, while the European Space Agency's Mars
Express orbiter can in turn serve as the backup communications relay for
NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers.
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