Sentences with phrase «surface missions»

Schmitt, the only scientist to visit the Moon, and Stafford, who orbited the Moon on Apollo 10, clearly want lunar surface missions back in the plan.

He spent the next 10 years at JPL, participating in assembly, test, and launch operations for Mars missions and acting as flight director for Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity and surface mission manager for Mars lander Phoenix.

As NASA gains experience dealing with the hazards of deep space, it will be in a better position to design vehicles for Mars surface missions.

TGO's successful entry into Mars's orbit is a major achievement that will not only open a new window on the planet's atmosphere but also will shore up the dwindling orbital infrastructure there by acting as a vital communications link for current and future surface missions.

The strategy called for a series of robotic missions to perform three tasks: 1) identify likely sites from orbiting spacecraft to map surface mineralogy; 2) send landers to the best sites to locate aqueously deposited sedimentary rocks; and 3) mount surface missions to target and sample the most likely deposits at these sites and return them to Earth for in - depth laboratory study.

«Though its science instruments will generate more data than any previous surface mission, [the Mars 2020 rover] will depend on an orbital relay network that will be nearly 20 years old to return this invaluable data,» Dreier says.

The Chang «e-3 mission marks the rekindling of humanity's love affair with the moon, as a new round of international explorers take aim at its surface

The 1 - ton rover touched down on the night of Aug. 5, 2012 U.S. Pacific Time (early morning Aug. 6 EDT and GMT), kicking off a two - year surface mission to determine if Mars could have ever supported microbial life.

For folks in Congress, NASA's «plate» most likely includes fully implementing the SLS / Orion enabled ISS emergency backup mission capability and Lunar surface missions required in the «National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 (PUBLIC LAW 111 - 267 OCT. 11, 2010)».

China will attempt to land the Chang» e 3 rover on the moon at year's end, the first lunar surface mission since Russia's Luna 24 sample return lander in 1976.

But in the three - and - a-half years since then, Planetary Resources has made significant progress towards developing and testing the technology needed to make its dream become a reality, according to Lewicki, who served as flight director for NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, and surface mission manager for the Phoenix Mars Lander.

Engineers have already come up with various tactics to maximize the flexibility and minimize the cost of a Mars surface mission.

Based on the calculations we've done, we can actually do lunar surface missions, with no propellant production on the surface of the moon.

Surface missions could last 2 weeks and safely abort at any time.

He was Flight Director for the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Surface Mission Manager for Phoenix.

Obama and Congress agreed that the long term goal is landing humans on Mars, but not on whether lunar surface missions are a necessary prerequisite.

While many in Congress and the space community call for stability and continuity at NASA — no big changes like those imposed by President Obama — an exception is made for the prospect of restoring lunar surface missions.

If that's not a huge, blinking neon sign pointing at Enceladus, saying: «We need a surface mission here!»

The bill does not require that NASA reinstate lunar surface missions to its human exploration plan, but Palazzo noted that the NRC report pointed to the «significant contributions» such missions could provide for the longer term goal of human landings on Mars.

In recent years, after sending an armada of satellites and surface missions to the planet, we realised that although any life form would have a hard time on the barren, cold, radiation - soaked landscape, there could be alien oases where the most basic forms of microbial life have eked out an existence.

The first demonstration of MAVEN's capability to relay data from a Mars surface mission, on Nov. 6, 2014, included this and other images from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.