LET’S Mars, and with flags of Europe and Italy in great evidence. A take off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Monday will be a rocket with scientific instruments of the Exo-Mars mission. But transparency on that rocket, it’s hard not to see the profile of a man of the future directed to the red planet. “We’ll get there, I am convinced,” says the president of the Italian Space Agency, Roberto Battiston . “Just as we arrived on the highest peaks. I believe that in 10, 20 or 30 years a man or a woman will land on Mars. “
Waiting Man, the enterprise has embarked a good slice of Italy. A ExoMars our country participates with 32% of the 1.3 million euro total and with some instruments made entirely by Italian industries. Among others: the drill that will bore the Martian subsurface to search for traces of life and Schiaparelli module to October, at the end of the long journey, will try to land in the softest possible way on the planet’s surface. First of all not to spoil the expensive scientific instruments on board, but also to show that the impact would not be too violent for the man of the future.
“Over 5 thousand people in Italy are employed in the space industry, “said Mauro Moretti , general manager of Finmeccanica, the protagonist of the technological and industrial part of the mission together with Thales Alenia space and Telespazio. “We are working on a dream, as it was a dream the first mission in which for the first time a vehicle is resting on the surface of a comet,” said Battiston.
And “Dreams” , ie, dreams, is the instrument of which he is the coordinator Francesca Esposito , planetologist national Institute for astrophysics (INAF) observatory of Capodimonte. “It is not a name chosen at random,” he says. “Many of our team have participated in missions that have gone wrong in the past. For my thesis, for example, I worked in a finite tool in the ocean. The rocket, direct to Mars, missed the launch. ” For sure, this time, the Esposito will not dream anything to the eve of his departure: “I do not close my eyes.”
Dreams is a 4-pound weather control unit mounted aboard Schiaparelli. When the module will be landed on Mars, will switch to transmit in Darmstadt and then to Capodimonte on the pressure data, humidity, temperature, wind direction and intensity, transparency and electrical properties of the atmosphere. To test it in a hostile environment like that of the Red Planet, the Esposito and his colleagues have organized three missions in the Sahara. “When we get to Mars – he explained – we will be in full season of sandstorms. We know that in these conditions the atmosphere is charged with electricity and generates a lot of lightning. We chose the similar storms in the Sahara to see what we might expect. “
If
in the first phase of the Exo-Mars Schiaparelli module will send data from the ground while the Tgo probe will remain in orbit around the planet scanning from its surface, the second phase of the mission – whose launch is expected in 2018 – will focus on proper research of traces of Martian life. A drill, always made in Italy, will be mounted on a robot with wheels, it will penetrate into the soil up to two meters deep and analyze the collected samples. The “first look” it will be up to Ma-Miss, the instrument coordinated by Maria Cristina De Sanctis , INAF researcher in Rome, which has the task of identifying minerals or molecules in the basement, where it is probably more easy to find traces of life. “Mars is bombarded by cosmic rays, gamma rays, it is an extremely acidic and unsuited to life, today. But we know that in the past it was not so. Underground, protected from cosmic rays, something might have been, “says Battiston. “Mars is the most Earth-like planet,” adds Edwards. “His early history is not very different from ours. There were water and oceans. Then something happened, we do not know exactly what, and the planet has died. Understanding Mars is also to try to understand if a similar fate might someday hit Earth. ” The majority, among the connoisseurs of the red planet, counting on the presence of any trace of life. “I am sure the Martians,” explains De Sanctis. “But most probably simple life forms such as bacteria. The water flowed in abundance, temperatures were reasonable and many chemical elements are similar to ours. Why not? “.
ExoMars will tell someday. After the departure from the Russian cosmodrome Baikonur (which geographically is located in Kazakhstan), the European Space Agency’s daughter probe, Italian Space Agency and Roscosmos to Moscow, will have in front of him 141 million kilometers and seven months travel. The landing of Schiaparelli is scheduled for October 19. Then even the control room run by the Altec in Turin will come alive a bit ‘as it happens to the open space of the Nasa.
But
speeches aside, Italians on Mars we should really? “I do not think so,” excludes Esposito. “A bad place so cold, inhospitable. They are admired by those who gave their availability “. A “no” peremptory is also the response of De Sanctis. “I never liked the idea of space travel. If it were possible to skip the step of the way and spend on the planet just a search term, then I would change my mind. ” At launch, but it is not a surprise, it would be rather ready astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti : “I’d love to, but then we should make an effort to speed up.”
No comments:
Post a Comment