Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...miles from the lander. It will be equipped with TV cameras, scoops and drills to sample materials and a minilab to analyze them. With information gained from this mission, the Soviets hope to launch as early as 1998 a larger Mars lander-rover that could return soil samples to earth...
...unmanned rover with six wheels, each more than 3 ft. in diameter, to accommodate the rocky Martian terrain. In a still unapproved mission, the rover, imbued with artificial intelligence and television eyes, would seek out appropriate rock samples and stow them in a craft designed to return them to earth for analysis. At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., experts are designing living quarters for the space station that the U.S. hopes to begin assembling in earth orbit in the mid-1990s. Plans call for private sleeping cubicles, each equipped with a TV, sound systems...
...long the voyagers stay on Mars will depend in part on the homeward-bound route. To await the proper alignment of Mars and the earth for an economical Hohmann-ellipse return, the crew would have to remain on Mars for more than a year -- increasing the mission length to what now seems an unbearably long 1,100 days. But with the expenditure of more fuel, the explorers could blast off earlier, head toward Venus and loop around it, using the planet's gravity to whip their craft toward earth at a higher speed. That would cut the mission time...
...Venus route would also cause the craft to re-enter the earth's atmosphere at 80,000 m.p.h., in contrast to the returning Apollo's 25,000 m.p.h. "We're not sure we know how to build the appropriate heat shields," says Oberg. Also, at that speed, the astronauts would have a much smaller "window" for re-entering the atmosphere. "Come in too low, and you burn up," says Oberg. "Come in too high, and you overshoot. You miss the earth, and you'll never see it again." Other plans call for an unmanned cargo ship to precede the manned...
...problems of sending a spacecraft to Mars and bringing it back to earth pale when compared with the challenge of keeping its human cargo safe and in peak physical and mental condition. The medical consequences of long periods of weightlessness are still not fully understood. And radiation, says NASA's Michael Bungo, "is going to be a showstopper." Once beyond the earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, which protects terrestrial life from most lethal radiation, crew members would be vulnerable to cosmic rays. These highly energetic particles travel through space at close to the speed of light and can produce...