美国火星探测车将探索古生命

NASA's Mars 2020 rover, its latest robotic mission to the Red Planet, will include technology to explore ancient life on Mars, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Wednesday.

 

美国宇航局送往火星的最新型探测车将加入可以探索火星古生命的技术。
 

 

The science goal of the Mars 2020 rover is to look for signs of ancient life. It will be the first spacecraft to collect samples of the Martian surface, caching them in tubes that could be returned to Earth on a future mission.

 

The atmosphere on Mars is mostly carbon dioxide and extremely thin, about 100 times less dense¹ than the Earth's, with no breathable oxygen. There's no water on the surface and the landscape is freezing, with no protection from the Sun's radiation or from passing dust storms.

 

The keys to survival will be technology, research and testing, said JPL, adding Mars 2020 will help on all those fronts.

 

When it is launched in July 2020, the spacecraft will carry the latest scientific and engineering tools.

 

Before touchdown on Mars, sensors² in the spacecraft's aeroshell, the capsule that encloses the rover, will study how it heats up and performs during atmospheric³ entry.

 

The rover has a guidance system that will take a step toward safer landings. Called Terrain⁴ Relative Navigation, this new system figures out where the spacecraft is headed by taking camera images during descent and matching landmarks⁵ in them to a preloaded map.

 

If the spacecraft drifts toward dangerous terrain, it will divert to a safer landing target.

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