The U.S. space agency scored a great scientific achievement last August with the landing of Curiosity , a robot than a ton, the heaviest land on Mars, which included the use of a crane and supersonic parachute, but experts say that everything will be even harder with humans on board.
“The Curiosity landing was an incredible achievement” , said Robert Braun, NASA’s former engineer currently Professor Georgia Institute of Technology, at a conference in Washington on the conquest of Mars .
“But there is only a tiny step compared to what we should do in order to walk a day on Mars,” he added.
three-day conference, which began Monday, has brought together experts from NASA, university researchers and members of the aerospace industry to discuss the exploration of Mars.
“Curiosity is the size of a small 4×4″ , Braun said on the six-wheeled mobile laboratory has been exploring Mars for the past nine months.
“But for a manned mission would be to develop a device capable of posing in Martian soil volume equivalent to a two-story house with a mass of 40 tons,” he said.
mission would
well sending food, water and oxygen for astronauts, and a vehicle powerful enough to return to the spacecraft, which will probably remain in orbit.
“The technologies they would resort to pose such a burden on Mars would certainly be very different from the systems we have been using for the robot, significantly smaller,” said Braun.
Curiosity
Except, the top six U.S. probes that successfully landed in the Martian soil since 1974 were light enough to slow its descent with a parachute and balloon amortized contact with the ground.
Curiosity, too heavy for that model amartizaje, required a complex system that included a supersonic parachute and rocket-propelled crane.
‘None of this can be applied to the expected loads for a manned mission, “said Braun.
The Martian atmosphere is considerably less dense than Earth, whose atmospheric pressure at 40 km altitude is equivalent to that of Mars at 10,000 meters, which leaves little time to stop the supersonic speed of a spacecraft, said .
“It’s a challenge we have not yet encountered, and for which we do not have a specific answer,” he said.
Adam Stelzner, one of the inventors of the crane pose at Curiosity allowed, “not about inventing new technologies but to be a little more creative with the use of what exists.”
“In 2003 – eight years before the launch of Curiosity – did not know how posarnos on Mars ” recalled the engineer’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, space crane estimating that could serve for a manned mission.
“We need a thrust reverser system operating at two or three times the speed of sound,” said Charles Campbell meanwhile, aerodynamics expert at NASA.
“We know how to build a supersonic machine, but not in retropropulsión” he said, and felt that “the rocket engine and landing control of the greatest difficulties.”
“A human mission to Mars will require a vehicle of the scale of a space shuttle,” he said, adding that the costs will be high and the magnitude of the effort will likely require international cooperation.
The head of NASA, Charles Bolden, said the United States was determined, despite budgetary constraints, to send astronauts to Mars in the next 20 years, mobilizing all the resources of space exploration for the sole purpose .
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