Introduction
As you’ve seen in the lectures this week, we are incredibly interested in Mars and in particular, it’s potentially very Earth-like past. I really need about four seperate lectures to do justice to the myriad missions and all of the amazing scientific experiments and discoveries that have taken place on this little world, but alas, there’s only 10 weeks in the quarter. So that’s where you all come in.
The latest and arguably the greatest of the missions and flotilla of scientific instruments we have sent to the Red Planet is the Mars 2020 mission (https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/overview/ (Links to an external site.)) which includes the new Perserverance rover and it’s companion, the Ingenuity helicopter. Perserverance, or Percy, as she is lovingly called, is the latest in the long evolution and history of rovers to explore the Martian surface, all of which you heard about in the lectures this week. As you have seen, rover technology has come a long way since the little Sojourner rover rolled off of it’s landing pad in early December of 1996. And Percy is not alone. A new testbed for unmanned flight, the helicopter Ingenuity (yeah, she’s got a nickname too – Ginny) accompanied Percy, tucked safely away under her belly and was deployed soon after landing. Ginny has been a wild success.
Discusson Prompt
This week we’d like for your group to discuss how the science and technology goals of the Mars 2020 mission might change our view of Mars as a planet and as a possible abode for life, and also how we might explore it in the future. Your discussion can evolve in many different directions here. You can discuss the rover experiments and the caching for sample return to study habitability and life; aerial reconnaissance and flight on a planet with a completely different atmosphere than Earth and what that means in terms of our ability to explore the surfaces of new worlds; where scientists have chosen to land the mission and and why this location is so compelling; etc. The sky’s the limit here! This is an incredibly important and exciting mission, so dig in to the literature (there’s a ton of new information out there) and have fun discussing history in the making! Who knows, Percy may discover that Earth was not the only cradle for life in our Solar System…while you are in this class. You live in really exciting times!
Submission Instructions
To submit an Initial Post: You might find it useful to type a very short TITLE or TOPIC on the first line to help organize the disciussion. Suggestion: Typing the topic in all caps (eg. STEP 1; IMAGE SELECTION; etc.) on the first line of your post will make it possible for everyone to quickly identify the topic or step in the procedure you are referring to.
- Two original posts（Each post 1/2 page）
- both must start a topic thread
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