“Over the lifetime of the mission, MAVEN supported greater than 8 p.c of all of our relay periods deliberate by our rovers and landers, but it surely accounted for almost 18 p.c of all the information returned, illustrating its usefulness when returning giant information volumes,” mentioned Tiffany Morgan, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
The community nonetheless has loads of capability to assist the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, with some minor caveats.
“We do have remaining property, and people property have adjusted the quantity of information that they return, and the rovers have additionally adjusted their planning for a way they hook up with these property,” Morgan mentioned. “There’s a slight delay from time to time, as a result of we don’t have as many property in view, to getting our science information again, and MAVEN was vital in returning science information versus operational information. However the Mars Relay Community is resilient sufficient at this time limit to accommodate, for essentially the most half, the lack of MAVEN with the added delay.”
NASA is asking industrial corporations to develop a alternative for the prevailing Mars Relay Community. The brand new industrial system, referred to as the Mars Telecommunications Community, is predicted to offer larger throughput and broader protection for NASA’s future missions to the purple planet.
“As a substitute of every mission designing its personal communications resolution, we’ll construct in a extra succesful structure intentionally designed for Mars,” mentioned Greg Heckler, deputy program supervisor for functionality improvement at NASA’s Area Communications and Navigation workplace. “It will likely be constructed on the teachings from MAVEN, from the opposite orbiters, from each mission working on this atmosphere, together with the present rovers, and from a few of our rising endeavors across the Moon.”
NASA needs the Mars Telecommunications Community to be operational by the 2030s. The company launched a request for proposals final month.
“I believe there’s … urgency,” Heckler mentioned. “I believe NASA establishing this infrastructure goes to be essential to proceed science operations of the present missions right here as we speak after which allow us to execute on these newer, larger missions but to return.”
