Mars Surveyor Spacecraft Blasts Off
NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Thursday atop a Delta rocket en route to the Red Planet--the initial step in an attempt to eventually probe Mars for further evidence of life.
Surveyor, which is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, is the first of three missions to Mars expected during a two-month launch window this fall, when Mars and Earth are favorably aligned. The window won’t open again for more than two years.
“We’re on our way!” NASA space science chief Wesley Huntress Jr. said of the first U.S. mission to Mars since the Viking missions of the 1970s. “These are the kinds of days you kind of live for in space science and space exploration.”
After Surveyor reaches Mars next fall, it will be joined by the Russian spacecraft Mars 96, which will drop two landers onto the planet’s surface. Surveyor’s instruments will scrutinize the entire planet from space while the Russian probes provide an on-site reality check from the surface.
Ironically, the final mission to be launched to Mars this year, NASA’s Pathfinder, will blast off in December but is due to arrive first, on July 4.
None of the missions is expected to directly shed much light on the question most on peoples’ minds since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released images of fossil-like forms on a Martian meteorite two months ago: Did ancient life exist on Mars?
Definitive answers will have to wait for future missions that can bring back Martian rocks for analysis in Earth laboratories.
But Surveyor will pave the way by thoroughly mapping the planet’s surface, identifying promising landing sites.
Once it is captured by Martian gravity, Surveyor will spread its solar panel wings and glide into a nearly circular 235-mile-high orbit, then loop around the planet every two hours taking detailed pictures of its enormous mountains and volcanoes, ancient river channels and frozen poles.
On-board instruments will gather clues about the planet’s atmosphere, surface chemistry, magnetic fields and radiation, and beam daily weather reports back to Earth. Its cameras can pick up objects as small as a minivan.
Above all, it will look for signs of water--a requirement for life as we know it.
The smallish Surveyor is a hastily assembled successor to the billion-dollar Mars Observer, which arrived at Mars in August 1993 but then disappeared from NASA’s radar screens, never to be heard from again. According to NASA chief Daniel Goldin, Surveyor carries 80% of Observer’s instruments at one-quarter the cost.
Over the next 10 years, NASA plans to launch a pair of spacecraft to Mars every 26 months, during each launch window. The only snag in the $230-million mission Thursday appeared to be a solar panel on the spacecraft that did not extend properly. NASA expects it to straighten out eventually.
