I'm impressed Gusev Crater survived the semi-final cut. I'm sadded Melas was cut, but as much as I favor Valles Marineris I'm not surprised. The more I read about Jezero the more intriguing it sounds; considering it was a lake on the edge of what would have been the sea Isidis Planitia with lakes flowing through it was bound to have had a great deal of history happening.
Well, good evidence for hot springs anyway. So you could say evidence for a habitable environment. But evidence for life, no. Nowhere on Mars has that (yet).
I dont agree with their landing sites. They should have chosen areas in Valles Marineris or Hellas Planitia- those areas have got the thickest atmosphere and possible liquid water / hydro-thermal sites.
Quote from: Triptych on 02/26/2017 02:49 pmI dont agree with their landing sites. They should have chosen areas in Valles Marineris or Hellas Planitia- those areas have got the thickest atmosphere and possible liquid water / hydro-thermal sites.They will not choose any site with any water presence. Since they might find signs of life. Causing the planetary protection crowd will scream for Mars to be off limits to further "Human contamination".
Currently at Space Science Week. Just heard an interesting presentation on the NASA Mars program. Some discussion of the connection of Mars 2020 to Mars sample return. I'll post the slides later, but the presenter got into things like recent tests for the ascent vehicle from Mars (they are now looking at parafin-based fuels because they have better cold storage handling qualities).
Some neat stuff, and it makes me think that maybe we need a dedicated thread here devoted to the connection between Mars 2020 and sample return.
Paraffin as in kerosene or paraffin as in paraffin wax? If the later, does this mean a hybrid propulsion syste,?
So here's the interesting thing on parachutes:Remember the reentry vehicle tests they did off Hawaii? Remember how they did two tests and both times the parachutes failed? It turns out that NASA used the same software to predict what would happen in those tests AND with the parachute used for Curiosity (and planned for Mars 2020). And here's the rub: the software predicted that the test parachutes and the Curiosity parachutes would be successful, but the test parachutes failed. Which makes people a bit worried that the software is flawed, and that Curiosity may have gotten lucky. So they are going back and reevaluating that stuff. Interesting, hmmmmm?
Maybe the Hawaii chutes failed because of factors unrelated to the model. Remember, modelling is not reality.