UCLA/TRW/JPL Team Awarded Mars Scout Study Grant; Multi-lander Approach Could Answer Fundamental Questions About Mars Water Cycle, Geologic History.Business Editors NOTE TO MEDIA: Photo is available in a Smart News Release(TM) on Business Wire's Home Page at www.businesswire.com and at www.newstream.com LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 13, 2001 A UCLA-led team including TRW TRW The Real World (TV reality show) TRW The Right Way TRW Tactical Reconnaissance Wing TRW The Retriever Weekly (University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD) TRW Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :TRW) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory “JPL” redirects here. For other uses, see JPL (disambiguation). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center located in the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, near Los Angeles, California, USA. , has been awarded a six-month, $150,000 study grant by NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. to refine the concept for a mission to Mars that would deploy a series of small robotic science probes on the planet's surface as early as 2008. Data gathered by the proposed Artemis Multi-Scout Mission could help scientists answer fundamental questions about the possibility of life on Mars Scientists have long speculated about the possibility of life on Mars owing to the planet's proximity and similarity to Earth. It remains an open question whether life exists on Mars now, or existed there in the past. , the distribution and behavior of water on the red planet, and the nature of geologic processes that created the layered deposits in the Mars polar regions polar regions: see Antarctica; Arctic, the. . Artemis is one of several concepts proposed by the science community for study as precursors to NASA's Mars Scout missions, a series of principal-investigator-led, $300 million missions intended to complement the science goals of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. NASA expects to release the Announcement of Opportunity for the first Mars Scout mission in 2002. "Artemis offers NASA a powerful, cost-effective way to follow up on key science discoveries made by the core Mars Exploration missions and to scout potential landing sites for future Mars missions," said UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX professor David A. Paige, the Artemis principal investigator Noun 1. principal investigator - the scientist in charge of an experiment or research project PI scientist - a person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences . "TRW's expertise in spacecraft engineering and manufacturing coupled with JPL's lander experience will help the Artemis science team refine the plan for this mission." The Artemis concept comprises a "mother ship" launched into orbit around Mars carrying up to four flying-saucer-like "landers," each about 2 feet in diameter. Over the course of several months, the orbiter would "aim" and release the landers one at a time with high precision to a variety of Mars latitudes and locations. Each lander would parachute to the Martian surface, where it would use its payload of science instruments to collect data about the soils and atmosphere near the landing sites. The science data would be relayed back to Earth via the Artemis orbiter or other spacecraft orbiting Mars. Over the next six months, the UCLA/TRW/JPL team will refine the Artemis mission concept, focusing in particular on lander deployment and targeting techniques required for high precision landing, and the manufacturing technologies required to produce several high reliability landers in parallel at a reasonable cost. "During our study, we will be looking at all aspects of the feasibility of the mission, paying special attention to minimizing risk," said Paige. "Having multiple landers will really improve our flexibility with this mission. We will be able to target more than one landing site and gain experience with every landing." Note: A Photo is available at URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?pw.061301/bb11 |
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