Notable Endeavors
Straton Assists as Supplier with the NASA JPL Rover Project Due to land on Mars 2011
Next NASA Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2011
The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars.
The relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to Mars only a few weeks every two years. The original hopeful date of the launch was October, 2009 – however the next launch date of the fall of 2011 became to be the more prudent choice. Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The right and smart course now for a successful mission is to launch in 2011."
The advanced rover is one of the most technologically challenging interplanetary missions ever designed. It will use new technologies to adjust its flight while descending through the Martian atmosphere, and to set the rover on the surface by lowering it on a tether from a hovering descent stage. Advanced research instruments make up a science payload 10 times the mass of instruments on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. The Mars Science Laboratory is engineered to drive longer distances over rougher terrain than previous rovers. It will employ a new surface propulsion system.
Rigorous testing of components and systems is essential to develop such a complex mission and prepare it for launch. Tests during the middle phases of development resulted in decisions to re-engineer key parts of the spacecraft.
The mission will explore a Mars site where images taken by NASA's orbiting spacecraft indicate there were wet conditions in the past. Four candidate landing sites are under consideration. The rover will check for evidence of whether ancient Mars environments had conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and preserving evidence of that life if it existed there.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Science Laboratory project for the Science Mission Directorate.