No abstract

The ExoMars Mission is the first ESA led robotic mission of the Aurora Programme approved by the ESA Council at ministerial level on 6 December 2005 and combines technology development with investigations of major scientific interest. ExoMars will search for traces of past and present life, characterise the Mars geochemistry and water distribution, improve the knowledge of the Martian environment and geophysics, and identify possible surface hazards for future human exploration missions. ExoMars will also validate the technology for safe Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) of a large size spacecraft on Mars, the surface mobility and the access to subsurface. The ExoMars project is presently undergoing its B1 phase with Alcatel Alenia Space-Italy as Industrial Prime Contractor. The challenges of the missionThe Exomars mission presents a number of unique technological and programmatic challenges to the European space community; the following mission objectives represent new achievements for Europe:landing of a large spacecraft on Mars deployment of a Rover on the Mars surface drilling of soil samples from under the Martian surface (this was never achieved even by NASA), and analysis of the samples for identification of possible traces of life achievement of a very high degree of sterilisation of the complete landing spacecraft. The complete sterilisation is necessary in order to avoid the contamination of the Martian samples by terrestrial micro-organisms. The spacecraft and the mission planningThe mission baseline, set for the beginning of the B1 phase and subject of this paper, foresees the launch of a Composite Spacecraft, usually identified as the Composite, by means of a Soyuz 2-1b launcher lifting from Kourou in 2011, with back up in 2013. The Spacecraft is composed of a Carrier and a Descent Module Composite (DMC). The DMC includes the Descent Module and the Rover, carrying the Drill system and the Pasteur Payload instruments. The transfer to Mars will last two years, and the arrival at Mars will be planned such as to avoid the so called Global Dust Storm season. The Descent Module will then separate from the Carrier and will enter the Mars atmosphere, descend and land on the surface: aerodynamic braking, parachutes and airbags techniques will be employed during these phases. Then, the Rover with its payloads will egress from the lander and will perform the scientific exploration mission during six months, with the possibility to extend the exploration for six more months. The data relay to the Earth will be provided either by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or by a European orbiter which is being studied as an alternative mission option. MISSION DESCRIPTION Launch and Transfer To MarsThe mission baseline, set for the beginning of the B1 phase and subject of this paper, foresees the launch of a Composite Spacecraft, usually identified as the Composite, by means of a Soyuz 2-1b launcher lifting from Kourou in 2011, with back up in 2013. The Composite will be made of a Carrier and a Descent Module Composite...

<p>The ExoMars Rover and Surface Platform planned for launch in 2022 is a large international cooperation between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos with a scientific contribution from NASA.  Thales Alenia Space is the ExoMars mission industrial prime contractor. </p> <p>Besides sensors and instruments characterizing the surface at large scale, the ExoMars’ rover Rosalind Franklin payload features some experiments devoted specifically to the characterization of the first few meters of the Martian subsurface. These experiments are particularly critical for the main ExoMars objective of detecting traces of present or past life forms on Mars, which may have been preserved within the shallow Martian underground [1].</p> <p>Rosalind Franklin will be able to perform both non-invasive geophysical imaging of the underground [2] and subsurface <em>in situ</em> measurements thanks to the Drill unit installed on the rover. The Drill has been developed by Leonardo and its purposes are 1) to collect core samples to be analyzed in the Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD) onboard the Rover and 2) to drive the miniaturized spectrometer Ma_MISS within the borehole.   </p> <p>Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies, [3]) will collect mineralogic measurements from the rocks exposed into the borehole created by the Drill with a spatial resolution of 120 μm down to 2 meters into the Martian subsurface.</p> <p>Rocks are composed of grains of minerals, and their reaction to an applied stress is related to the mechanical behavior of the minerals that compose the rock itself. The mechanical properties of a mineral depend mainly on the strength of the chemical bonds, the orientation of crystals, and the number of impurities in the crystal lattice.</p> <p>In this context, the integration of Ma_MISS measurements and drill telemetry are of great importance.  The mechanical properties of rocks coupled with their mineralogic composition provide a rich source of information to characterize the nature of rocks being explored by ExoMars rover’s drilling activity.</p> <p>Within our study, we are starting to collect telemetry recorded during the Drill unit tests on several samples ranging from sedimentary to volcanic rocks with varying degrees of weathering and water content.  In this first phase of the study, we focused our attention on the variation of torque and penetration speed between different samples, which have been found to be indicative of a particular type of rock or group of rocks and their water content.  </p> <p>We are planning to analyze the same rocks with the Ma_MISS breadboard creating the link between the mineralogy and the mechanical response of the Drill.      </p> <p>This will put the base for a more comprehensive and rich characterization of the <em>in situ</em> subsurface observation by Rosalind Franklin planned at Oxia Planum, Mars in 2023. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Acknowledgments: </strong>We thank the European Space Agency (ESA) for developing the ExoMars Project, ROSCOSMOS and Thales Alenia Space for rover development, and Italian Space Agency (ASI) for funding the Ma_MISS experiment (ASI-INAF contract n.2017-48-H.0 for ExoMars MA_MISS phase E/science).</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>References</strong></p> <p>[1] Vago et al., 2017. Astrobiology, 17 6-7. [2] Ciarletti et al., 2017. Astrobiology, 17 6-7. [3] De Sanctis et al., 2017. Astrobiology, 17 6-7.</p>

No abstract

No abstract