First Landing Site Workshop for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover mission to Mars. The workshop will be held May 31st through June 2nd, 2006, in Pasadena, CA.

Look for life but don't bring any of your own.
- LRK -

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http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/msl/First_MSL_Landing_Site_Workshop_Annoucement_1-18-06.htm
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Planetary Protection Considerations:

The MSL project has been assigned to Category IVc by NASA’s Planetary Protection Office with constraints on the landing site and regions accessed from it. Specifically, MSL is limited to landing sites not known to have extant water or water-ice within one meter of the surface. Later access to “special regions” defined in NPR 8020.12C (regions where terrestrial organisms are likely to propagate, or interpreted to have a high potential for the existence of extant martian life forms) is permitted only in the vertical direction through use of sterilized sampling hardware. The above are general guidelines for site selection; compliance of specific landing sites and nearby regions will be determined through discussions with the Planetary Protection Office during the site selection process.

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It takes time to plan an outing on Mars. Only 3 years to go for launch and folks are considering interesting places to visit.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
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http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/#0605

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May 31-Jun 02 - 1st Landing Site Workshop For the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory, Pasadena, California http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/msl/First_MSL_Landing_Site_Workshop_Annoucement_1-18-06.htm


First Landing Site Workshop For the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory May 31st - June 2, 2006 Pasadena, CA

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An Overview of Workshop Objectives:

The purpose of the Landing Site workshop is to identify and evaluate potential landing sites best suited to achieving stated mission science objectives within the constraints imposed by engineering requirements, planetary protection requirements, and the necessity of ensuring a safe landing. A NASA-appointed Landing Site Steering Committee and the Mars Science Laboratory Project will use the results of the workshop as the basis for narrowing the list of potential landing sites under consideration. Community consensus with respect to high priority sites will also be solicited. In addition, the workshop will provide a means for identifying potential landing sites as targets for imaging by the MGS, Odyssey, MRO, and perhaps other orbital assets. Note: the number of potential landing sites is high because MSL entry, descent, and landing capabilities enable a small landing error ellipse (20km diameter), high landing site altitude (<2km), and wide latitudes (±60°).

Mission Science Objectives:

The primary scientific goal of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is to assess the present and past habitability of the martian environments accessed by the mission. Habitability is defined as the potential of an environment to support life, as we know it. Such assessments require integration of a wide variety of chemical, physical, and geological observations. In particular, MSL will assess the biological potential of the regions accessed, characterize their geology and geochemistry at all appropriate spatial scales, investigate planetary processes that influence habitability, including the role of water, and characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation. To enable these investigations, MSL will carry a diverse payload capable of making environmental measurements, remotely sensing the landscape around the rover, performing in situ analyses of rocks and soils, and acquiring, processing, and ingesting samples of rocks and soils into onboard laboratory instruments. A candidate landing site should contain evidence suggestive of a past or present habitable environment. To the extent that it can be determined with existing data, the geological, chemical, and/or biological evidence for habitability should be expected to be preserved for, accessible to, and interpretable by the MSL investigations.

An overview of the MSL mission can viewed at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/overview .
A summary of NASA’s Mars exploration strategy is at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mep/mslides/index.html
[note: link above doesn't work - LRK - try http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html ]

and additional information can be viewed at http://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/reports/index.html .
Web tools for visualizing and analyzing relevant Mars data as well as an archive of previously proposed and selected landing sites are available at http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/ and http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/ , which also includes a web based GIS interface for relevant Mars data. Web sites for MSL landing site selection activities are http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/
and the USGS PIGWAD site, where workshop announcements, program, and abstracts can be accessed along with more detailed descriptions of the MSL mission, science objectives and investigations, and instruments.

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http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/msl.html
Mars Science Laboratory

Spacecraft
Planned Launch: Fall, 2009
Arrival: October, 2010

Building on the success of the two rover geologists that arrived at Mars in January, 2004, NASA's next rover mission is being planned for travel to Mars before the end of the decade. Twice as long and three times as heavy as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory would collect martian soil samples and rock cores and analyze them for organic compounds and environmental conditions that could have supported microbial life now or in the past. The mission is anticipated to have a truly international flavor, with a neutron-based hydrogen detector for locating water provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency, a meteorological package provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, and a spectrometer provided by the Canadian Space Agency.


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http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/mars_science_lab_040211.html
Next Generation Rover: The Mars Science Laboratory By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
11 February 2004

PASADENA, Calif. -- While the Spirit and Opportunity rovers wheel themselves into the history books of Mars exploration, get ready for the next giant leap in rolling across the red planet.

The Mars Science Laboratory is an all-terrain, all-purpose machine, akin to an extraterrestrial Sport Utility Vehicle.

To be rocketed toward Mars in 2009, this long-range, long-duration robot is a trend setter. It will scope out Mars like never before to assess that puzzling planet as a potential habitat for life -- past or present -- and help verify if human explorers could exist there in the future.

Imaginative engineering

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory
This article or section contains information about scheduled or expected future events.

It may contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change dramatically as the event approaches and more information becomes available.

The Mars Science Laboratory (or MSL for short) is a NASA rover scheduled to launch in December 2009 and perform a precision landing on Mars in October 2010. This rover will be three times as heavy and twice the width of the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) that landed in 2004. It will carry more advanced scientific instruments than any other mission to Mars. The international community will provide most of these instruments. The MSL rover will be launched by an Atlas V or Delta IV medium class booster. Once on the ground, MSL will analyze dozens of samples scooped up from the soil and cores from rocks. MSL will be expected to operate for at least 1 martian year (~2 Earth years) as it explores with greater range than any previous Mars rover. It will investigate the past or present ability of Mars to support life.

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http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_2009_Rover.htm
2009 Mars Rover will be Nuclear Powered
- compiled by James C. Foster

The NASA Mars Exploration Program (MEP) will launch a spaceflight mission to Mars in late 2009 that will land a nuclear powered roving Mars Science Laboratory on the surface of the planet.

The long duration rover will be equipped to perform many scientific studies of Mars. The primary scientific objectives of the mission will be to assess the biological potential of at least one target area, characterize the local geology and geochemistry, investigate planetary processes relevant to habitability, including the role of water, and to characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation. The mission is planned to last at least one martian year (687 days). The landing site has not been chosen, but will be selected based on an assessment of its capacity to sustain life.

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http://www.marsnews.com/newswire/mars_science_laboratory/
January 18, 2006
Mars Science Laboratory: Big Wheels on A Red Planet Make way Spirit and Opportunity - big daddy is coming! The next wheels on the red planet will belong to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) a huge step in how that planet is further poked, probed, and more fully plumbed for new information. MSL is a huge chunk of machinery. At liftoff in September 2009, it will carry the largest, most advanced set of instruments for on-the-spot science duties ever dispatched to the martian surface. The nuclear-powered rover is being designed to assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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