Over the next week or two, we will begin posting some of the research we did for the exhibit. This will cover not just Curiosity's mission but every rover mission to Mars and will include a lot of information we just couldn't fit in the exhibit. To begin, let's talk about the first attempt to send a rover to Mars with Soviet Russia's Mars 2 and Mars 3 spacecraft.
Mars 2 and Mars 3 were part of Project M-71, whose goals were to photograph Mars' surface and clouds and to study its topography, surface composition, atmosphere, solar wind, magnetic fields, and temperature. Mars 2 and Mars 3 were identical in design: each spacecraft had an orbiter that would circle Mars, take photos, and run tests.
Each orbiter carried a lander that would be launched from the orbiter, land on Mars, and collect data as well.
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Mars 2/3 Lander: the back half is encased in a heat shield meant
to protect the lander as it entered Mars' atmosphere. Source. |
Where do the rovers come into play? Each lander came equipped with several scientific instruments that it would use to run its experiments. One of these instruments was the PrOP-M rover, a 9-pound vehicle less than 1 foot long that moved at 1 mile per hour. Its purpose was to measure the soil density on Mars.
After a safe landing, the rover would be lowered to the surface by a mechanical arm where it would move around using skis. It was attached to the lander with a cable, so it could only drive 50 feet out from the lander. A simple artificial intelligence program allowed the PrOP-M to detect obstacles and guided it to make measurements every 5 feet it traveled.
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The rover would be deployed by this
mechanical arm. Source. |
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A diagram of PrOP-M's deployment
and function. Source. |
What happened to the Mars 2 and Mars 3? Mars 2 was launched on May 13, 1971 and Mars 3 on May 28, 1971. Their mission was plagued with several problems during development and their flight paths had to be corrected a few times on their way to Mars. Additionally, they happened to approach Mars during the biggest dust storm astronomers had ever recorded on Mars up to that point.
Unfortunately, Mars 2 crash-landed on the Martian surface on November 27, 1971. It's on-board computer "issued a wrong command" to fall out of orbit at the wrong trajectory and it crashed before its parachute opened. According to V.G. Perminov, lead designer of Mars and Venus spacecraft during the Soviet Union's early Mars exploration, Mars 2 could have been saved by information they received in a trade with the United States in 1972.
The Mars 3 met with mixed success. On December 2, 1971, the lander arrived safely on Mars at location coordinates 45° S and 158° W. After 1 and a half hours, its sensors were open and it began transmitting panoramic images of the Martian surface. Mars 3 was the first object to achieve a soft landing (that is, not crashing) on Mars, and its photos were the first taken on the planet. The first of these can be seen below.
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| Mars 3's first image of the Martian surface. Source. |
As you can see, the image is far from ideal, but it provides evidence that Mars 3 was indeed the first object to land successfully on Mars, providing important data useful for future landings. However, it was not a total success: 14.5 seconds after it began transmission, both of its telephotometers failed. Perminov later suspected that an electrical discharge from the dust storm caused the failure.
Though both landers failed before they could put their rovers to work, the PrOP-M rovers from Mars 2 and Mars 3 were the first to travel to Mars. Though other landers and orbiters made the trip in the 1970's, 25 years passed before another rover made it to the Martian surface.
You can read V.G. Perminov's
The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union, at
this link.
For an overview of Project M-71, see the
Encyclopedia Astronautica at
this link.
For more on the PrOP-M rovers, Reuben Hoggett translated two Russian articles on his site
Cybernetic Zoo.
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