Robotic Surface Exploration Mission Essay
Robotic Surface Exploration Mission, 464 words essay example
Essay Topic: exploration
Robotic Surface Exploration Mission
This papers goal is to give a full research about Mars missions, and the creation of a new one.Mars is the closest habitable planet to the Earth, NASA and other space agencies done several missions in this planet. This missions started in the year 1960 and are still in progress. Different types of missions have been sent to Mars, you can distinguish between flybys, orbiters, landers and rovers. Flybys were the first kind of mission, and the goal of them is was flew near Mars and take as many pictures as possible. As the advancements in technology grew, robots that instead of passing by a planets orbited it, appeared. After the knowledge that the orbiters offered about the planets ground, the construction of landers, and later on Rovers began.
Research
The first flyby ever attempted in Mars was performed by the USSR. The 10 of October of 1960 the Marsnik 1 (Korabl 4) followed four days later by Marsnik 2 (Korabl 5), launched. Neither of them reached Earth orbit, the cause of this was that the third stage pumps did not develop enough trust to commence ignition.
Two years later, the USSR attempted another Mars flyby with the Sputnik 22 (Korabl 11). It launched the 24 of October of 1962, it did not leave Earth orbit because the final rocket stage exploded. The 1 of November of the same year, USSR launched Mars 1 (Korabl 12). The radio failed on the way to Mars, at a distance of 107 million Km from Earth. Three days later they launched a Mars lander called Sputnik 24 (Korabl 13). It reached Earth orbit, but it broke up during the Mars transfer burn.
In 1964 the United States joined the Martian Space career. On November 5 of 1964, Mariner 3 was launched. Due to an extra weight proportioned by the failure in the heat shield releasing, it did not reach the necessary trajectory to reach Mars. The Mariner 4, launched one the November 28 of the same year, was a total success. It passed within 9,844 kilometers of Mars and it offered the first close-up pictures of it. The Russians attempted a Mars flyby this year with the Zond 2. One of the solar panel failed and contact was lost before it reached Mars. Another spacecraft, Zond 3, was intended to be launch with Zond 2 the same year. But it lost the launch oppostunity and it ended doing a lunar flyby instead.
Next missions to the red planet weren't attempted until 1969. In this year there were four attempts, two of them fulfilled its mission. The U.S Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 were complete successes, while the Russian mars 1969A and Mars 1969B had launch failures. In the 1973 four Russians Spaceships take off in direction to Mars. Two of them were Flybys, the Mars 4 and Mars 7, and both failed. The other two were a Mars Orbiter, Mars 5, and a Mars lander, the Mars 6.