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ALL Vanderbilt University Virtual School video conferences are scheduled on
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Wednesday, November 18 Dr. Rick Chappell
Future Mission To Mars
[REMEMBER that all students should prepare questions to ask presenter during videoconference.]
Mars is just a stone's throw across the solar system from earth, but a manned mission to Mars is still just a dream. The people chosen to go to Mars will be out of reach of the Earth, completely on their own. While all the people will be astronauts, should they have various fields of specialty, like botany, engineering, or geology, or should each person be a jack-of-all-trades? If we send people with different professional backgrounds, which professions are most desirable?
Because of the fact that Mars may have once supported primitive life forms like bacteria, it's easy to imagine more advanced beings living there. What if you were one of the first explorers from Earth to arrive on Mars? Assuming you could communicate with any Martians you encountered, how would you explain why you had ventured to their planet to conduct experiments? Consider the encounters throughout history between explorers and the people they "discovered" as students formulate their answers.
Imagine your students have been chosen by NASA to develop a means of communicating with intelligent life on Mars, should such beings be encountered on future planned manned flights. Groups of students working together will discuss the parameters of their communication system. Will it be a kind of sign language? Will it include sounds, an alphabet, or hieroglyphic symbols? Will it be spoken, presented on a computer-like device, sent ahead to Mars on a disk or a chip? Students will then discuss what they would like to be communicated - the words, phrases, and ideas that would form the basis of initial communication with extraterrestrial beings.
In order for such a mission to become a reality, we would also need a vehicle to traverse challenging terrain (mountains, rock fields, deep gorges) of Mars. Remember the rover? It's the small, solar-powered, self-guided vehicle that explored the Martian terrain so we could see the fabulous pictures from the Red Planet. Students will research the rover's construction and its mission to Mars.
It will take you nine months to get to Mars, Mars moves a considerable distance around in its orbit, about 3/8 of the way around the Sun. You have to plan ahead to make sure that by the time you reach the distance of Mar's orbit, that Mars is where you need it to be! Practically, this means that you can only begin your trip when Earth and Mars are properly lined up. This only happens every 26 months. That is there is only one launch window every 26 months.
After spending 9 months on the way to Mars, you MUST spend some time at Mars! If you were to continue on your orbit around the Sun, then when you got back to where you started, Earth would no longer be where you left it!
Just like you have to wait for Earth and Mars to be in the proper position before you head to Mars, you also have to make sure that they are in the proper position before you head home. That means you will have to spend 3-4 months at Mars before you can begin your return trip. All in all, your trip to Mars would take about 21 months: 9 months to get there, 3 months there, and 9 months to get back. With our current rocket technology, there is no way around this.
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