v The Geography of Mars

[ image of Mars ]       

Geography of Mars

Lecture Notes

Christine M. Rodrigue, Ph.D.

Department of Geography
California State University
Long Beach, CA 90840-1101
1 (562) 985-4895
rodrigue@csulb.edu
https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/

Lecture Notes for the Midterm

  • History of Mars exploration
    • History of the robotic missions to Mars
      • The majority of missions have actually been failures: launch failures, orbit insertion failures, crashes
        • See Viewgraphs: "Venturing into space."
        • Fifty-one percent have been complete failures; only about 44% have been completely successful, with another 6% partially successful (as in returning a few images or even just part of one image during a failed orbit insertion or rough landing)
        • Mars is a very dangerous target: NASA people joke about the "Great Galactic Ghoul" that eats up spacecraft there, saying that Mars is the "Bermuda Triangle" of the solar system, or talking bleakly about the "Mars Curse"
        • Every time a mission fails, it takes out possibly decades of many scientists' and engineers' professional lives, years spent proposing the mission, securing approval and funding, negotiating the instruments that can go, designing and building the craft to support the final group of instruments, building and calibrating the instruments, launch, cruise, final placement on or around Mars, deployment and checks, and, finally, doing science if everything else succeeds.
        • This needs to be kept in mind as we contemplate sending people there ...
        • On the bright side, the rate of failures has declined over the decades (see viewgraphs for a bar chart of mission fates by decade)
      • Spacecraft types
        • Flyby missions are one time sensing opportunities as a spacecraft zips past a target (Earth analogue: gravitational-assist manœuvres by Galileo in 1990 and 1992, Cassini-Huygens in 1999, during which calibration imagery was taken; Mars examples: Mariner 4 in 1965, Mariner 6 and 7 in 1969)
        • Orbiters entailing gravitational capture of a spacecraft at the right velocity to achieve a desirable orbit of greater or lesser ellipticity (Earth analogues: Landsat, IKONOS, SPOT, GOES, POES, DMSP; Mars now has many orbiters currently active: Mars Observer, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, Hope, Mars Orbital Mission, Trace Gas Orbiter, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, Tianwen-1)
        • Probes are sent to crash on a planet, with the goal of collecting information on the way down (Galileo Atmospheric Probe at Jupiter in 1995, Cassini's Huygens probe at Titan in the Saturn system in 2005; Mars hasn't had this particular class of mission)
        • Balloon probes act as airborne platforms for sensors (USSR Vega 1 and 2 each successfully deployed balloons on Venus; various balloon mission configurations are being considered by NASA for Mars) of Venus)
        • Landers are stationary craft (the USSR Venera series included successful landers on Venus; successful Mars landers include the two Viking landers, Pathfinder, InSight, Phoenix, and Tianwen-1)
        • Rovers are surface craft that are capable of movement (Mars has had six successful rover missions: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance, and Zhurong)
        • Penetrators, unlike probes, are intended to get under the surface, whether by launch from an orbiter or by hammering by a lander (Mars 96 carried two that would be launched from the orbiter, but the entire mission failed on launch; InSight was to drive its Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package below the surface but unexpected physical properties and resistance of the soil prevented its full deployment)
        • Sample return missions are meant to collect samples of an extraterrestreial body or medium and then launch them to Earth for lab analysis here (the Apollo missions to the Moon collected lunar material that eventually allowed radiometric dating and correlation with impact cratering patterns to constrain ages for lunar surfaces and, through lots of prestidigitation, even for Mars, Mercury, Venus, and other bodies; Genesis collelcted solar wind particles from the L1 point in 2004 and sent capsules back to the Utah desert for a planned parachute landing and, instead, got a hard crash but much of the sample was recoverd anyhow; Stardust did the same thing less eventfully with cometary material from Comet Wild 2 in 2006; sample return is quite possibly the most important scientific goal for Mars for a variety of reasons, but the initially planned mission of 2008 was eventually scrubbed due to funding problems in the wake of President G.W. Bush's reconfiguration of the space program. Both Perseverance and Zhurong are collecting samples now for recovery by future missions and return to Earth in the 2030s)
      • Missions to Mars (successful missions highlighted)
        • Mars 1960A, aka Korabl 4 or Marsnik 1 (failed after liftoff 10 October 1960)
        • USSR Mars 1960B, aka Korabl 5 or Marsnik 2 (failed after liftoff 14 October 1960)
        • USSR Sputnik 22, aka Mars 1962A or Korable 11 (blew up on launch 24 October 1962)
        • USSR Mars 1, aka Sputnik 23 (launched on 1 November 1962, flyby on 19 June 1963. but communications failed earlier so it never sent data, entered independent orbit around sun)
        • USSR Sputnik 24, aka Mars 1962B or Korabl 13 (blew up on launch 4 November 1962)
        • USSR Zond 2 flyby (launched 30 November 1964, flyby on 6 August 1965, but communications failed earlier so it never sent data)
        • USSR Zond 3 orbiter (missed launch window, launched anyway on 18 July 1965, sent to Moon where it imaged dark side of the Moon, and then went on towards Mars as a test flight)
        • NASA Mariner 3 flyby (shroud failed to open after launch, 1964)
        • NASA Mariner 4 flyby (1965)
        • NASA Mariner 6 flyby (1969)
        • NASA Mariner 7 flyby (1969)
        • USSR unnamed Mars craft (failed on launch 27 March 1967)
        • USSR Mars 1969A orbiter (failed after liftoff on 27 March 1969)
        • USSR Mars 1969B orbiter (failed after liftoff on 14 April 1969)
        • USSR Cosmos 419 orbiter/lander (failed after liftoff on 10 May 1971)
        • USSR Mars 2 orbiter/lander combination (launched May 1971, orbiter achieved orbit in November 1971 but had telemetry problems)
        • USSR Mars 2 lander crashed in November 1971
        • USSR Mars 3 orbiter/lander combination (launched May 1971, orbiter achieved orbit in December 1971 and operated until August 1972, sending back 60 images;
        • Mars 3 lander soft-landed in December 1971 but only transmitted part of one uninterpretable image before failing. This was the first lander to make it to the surface of another planet, even if it only lasted about 15-20 seconds.
        • NASA Mariner 8 orbiter (failed on launch 8 May 1971)
        • NASA Mariner 9 orbiter (13 November 1971 - 27 October 1972)
        • USSR Mars 4 (launched in July 1973, failure during orbit insertion February 1974, but a few images were returned)
        • USSR Mars 5 orbiter (launched in July 1973, failure during orbit insertion February 1974), but Mars 5 sent back a few images
        • USSR Mars 6 lander (launched in August 1973, but crashed in March 1974)
        • USSR 7 lander (launched in August 1973, but missed the planet in March 1974)
        • NASA Viking 1 orbiter (1976: Orbiter 1 lasted until 1980;
        • NASA Viking 1 Lander (lasted until 1982)
        • NASA Viking 2 Orbiter (1976: lasted until 1978)
        • NASA Viking Lander 2 (lasted until 1980)
        • USSR Phobos 1 (launched on 5 July 1988, lost on 2 September 1988)
        • USSR Phobos 2 (launched on 12 July 1988, lost on 29 January 1989, but a few images were returned)
        • NASA Mars Observer (launched 25 September 1992, contact lost on arrival 22 August 1993)
        • Russian Space Agency Mars 96 orbiter/4 landers/2 penetrators (launched on 16 November 1996, failed to clear Earth orbit and lost soon after liftoff)
        • NASA Mars Pathfinder lander/NASA Sojourner rover (1997), designed for a one month mission, lasted nearly three months
        • NASA Mars Climate Orbiter (launched 11 December 1998, crashed on arrival 23 September 1999)
        • NASA Mars Polar Lander/Deep Space 2 (launched 3 January 1999, crashed on arrival 3 December 1999)
        • NASA Mars Global Surveyor orbiter launched 7 November 1996, sucessful orbit insertion on 12 September 1997, operated successfully for 9 years, going silent due to battery failure, ending the mission on 14 November 2006.
        • Japan Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, University of Tokyo, Nozomi, aka Planet-B or 25383 (launched 4 July 1998, unable to make planned orbit insertion on 11 October 1999, reconfigured for a new trajectory and orbit insertion on 14 December 2003 but last navigation correction failed and it made a flyby instead and entered an independent orbit around the sun
        • NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter launched on 7 April 2001, entered orbit on 24 October 2001, and still operating after more than 20 years!
        • ESA Mars Express orbiter/Beagle lander combination launched 2 June 2003, with successful orbit insertion of Mars Express on 25 December 2003. While the lander was a loss, the Mars Express orbiter has been operating well since arrival, 19 years on!
        • Beagle 2 ejected from Mars Express on 19 December 2003 and was scheduled to land on 25 December, but contact was lost. It was subsequently located, intact, by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Apparently, two of its four solar panels did not deploy, which blocked its communications antenna.
        • NASA Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity (January 2004-) (Opportunity is still operational as of February 2018; Spirit, mired in Troy Crater, went incommunicado on 22 March 2010 and efforts to revive it ended on 25 May 2011)
        • NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006-) has returned more data to date than all other Mars missions combined!
        • NASA Phoenix polar lander (August 2007, landed 25 May 2008, designed to collect data for three months, not expected to survive the martian winter in the polar regions, survived for five months until, apparently, ice destroyed its solar panels)
        • Russian Federal Space Agency's Phobos-Grunt (2011-2012) launched on 9 November 2011 but never made it out of Earth orbit. The orbit decayed until the spacecraft crashed into the Pacific on 15 January 2012.
        • NASA Mars Science Laboratory, aka the Curiosity rover, launched successfully on the 26th of November 2011, landing on 5 August 2012, and operating well since then.
        • NASA Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), launched successfully on 18 November 2013, successfully entered orbit around Mars on 21 September 2014, and has been operating properly since then.
        • ISRO Mangalyaan or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM),launched successfully on 12 January 2013, was successful in orbit insertion on 24 September 2014, and has been operating well since then.
        • ESA ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli Entry, Descent, and Landing Demonstraor Module (EDM) combination was launched on 14 March 2016. TGO successfully entered orbit on 19 October 2016 and has been operating successfully ever since
        • Schiaparelli, released from TGO on 16 October, crash-landed in Meridiani Planum on 19 October 2016. It has subsequently been imaged by the CTX context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2016). Apparently, it messed up its own landing sequence, smashed into the surface, and may have exploded. CTX revealed a new crater there.
        • NASA InSight lander (INterior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) launched from Vandenberg on 5 May 2018, landed in Elysium Planitia on 26 November 2018. Still operating, but with abandonment of the planned Heat Flow and Physical Properties instrument due to inability to drive the probe into the soil there. The lander is beginning to experience power issues from dust covering its solar panels and, so, entered minimal operation (seismic event monitoring only) to conserve dwindling power.
        • United Arab Emirates Space Agency launched the Hope orbiter on 19 July 2020 and successfully completed Mars orbit insertion on 9 February 2021, adopting a highly elliptical orbit that allows global-scale imaging at all times. Continuing operation in healthy condition.
        • Chinese National Space Agency launched the Tianwen-1 mission on 23 July 2020. This mission consists of six spacecraft, all considered successes:
          • the Tianwen-1 orbiter
          • Tianwen-1 First Deployable Camera that imaged the whole mission during its cruise to Mars and then did a flyby of Mars
          • Tianwen-1 Deployable Camera 2 that was released after orbit insertion
          • the Tianwen-1 lander that landed in Utopia Planitia on 14 May 2021
          • the Zhurong rover that deployed from the lander on 14 May 2021
          • the Tianwen-1 Remote Camera deployed from Zhurong on 14 May 2021 to image the landing site and the lander with the rover.
        • NASA 2020 rover: Perseverance launched on 30 July 2020 (during COVID!) and landed near the delta in Jezero Crater northwest of Isidis Planitia on 18 February 2021. Operating flawlessly since landing.
        • Perseverance deployed an experimental proof-of-concept helicopter, Ingenuity, on 4 April 2021. Expected to do a few flights, Ingenuity has been holding up, to the point it has been assigned an extended mission, being used to scout the terrain ahead of Perseverance and help in the selection of rover targets.
      • Waiting in the wings:
        • ESA and Roscosmos ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) rover will launch in the spring of 2020, landing nine months later in early 2021. The mission will be sent to Oxia Planum, a clay-rich area in Margaritifer Terra, with Mawrth Vallis to its north as a possible back-up site. The mission will consist of the Kazachok lander (Roscosmos) and the Rosalind Franklin rover. Like Mars 2020, this mission will focus on biosignatures.
        • ISRO plans to launch Mangalyaan 2.0, comprising a second orbiter at Mars, sometime before 2025.
        • The Japanese Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) is working with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Franch National Center for Space Studies (CNES) to plan a Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission for launch in 2024, with orbit insertion in 2025 and return of martian lunar material to Earth in 2029. The mission will include a rover to land on one of the martian moons, probably the larger Phobos. The objective is to learn about the origins of the moons: captured asteroids or debris from an impact into Mars.

[ orthographic image of Mars on a black background ] [ Olympus Mons seen at oblique angle that gives a 3-d sense ] [ Mars explorer ]

Dr. Rodrigue's Home |   GEOG 441/541 Home |   Geography Home |   ES&P Home |   EMER Home |
BeachBoard |   CSULB |   Library |   Bookstore

This document is maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
First placed online: 01/15/07
Last updated: 09/09/22