Exploring Space: NASA's Missions To The Moon And Mars

Directions for the Comparison/Contrast Essay

Write a five paragraph essay, to document the similarities and differences of the two major NASA missions:

1. The past Apollo missions to the Moon and
2. The planned future missions to Mars

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a form of independent agency supported by United States Federal Government. This organisation is responsible for the civilian space program. This also includes the research based on aerospace and aeronautics. Since, the establishment of the agency, most of the efforts of US space explorations have been led with the help of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). This had included the missions of Apollo Moon landing and other missions. The unquenchable thirst for the exploration of space would push the boundaries of science. Based on the statement by Neil Armstrong during his first walk on the moon, it was stated that "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." (Neil Armstrong)

The primary missions based on the past explorations to the Moon and planned future missions to Mars is based on exploring the intrinsic details of these planet.

The primary objective of the past Apollo missions were to make men to land on the lunar surface and thus also make them to return to the Earth in a safe manner. With the primary success of the Apollo 11, the primary objective to land men on to the Moon and thus make them to return to the Earth in a safe manner had been accomplished (Wieczorek). The Apollo program have primarily demonstrated an effective form of human geological exploration within the hostile environment of some other planet.

                                            (Fig 1: The Last mission of humans to land on the Moon’s surface)

                                                                           (Source: Wieczorek, pp. 673)

On the other hand, Mars has also been a matter of high research. More kind of such missions were attempted to the red planet than to any other place within the Solar System. The future mission on the Mars is named as Mars 2020 Rover. The primary objective of the planned mission to Mars primarily focuses on the surface-based studies within the Martian environment (Zeitlin et al.). They have been seeking the preservation of signs of bio signatures within rock samples. These mission have mainly been designed for seeking signs of past microbial life. Charles Duke who was an astronaut near a mini-observatory on the Moon has said "There was a contrast between the black sky of the moon and the brightness of the lunar surface. It was an incredible contrast." (Charles Duke)

The primary goal of the past exploring missions to the Moon and the future planned mission to Mars have some kind of similarity between them. The primary goal of science mainly relates to the national space policy based on sending of humans to the Mars in the future (Cohen). Similar to the history based on the exploration to the moon, the different robotic missions to Mars have also provided a crucial form of understanding of the environment.

The Objectives of NASA's Exploration Missions

The Apollo Missions were much unique based on travelling to the Moon and thus landing back to the Earth. After the launch of the mission, there were several kind of tests that had to be performed thoroughly in order to accomplish the mission. The six missions had achieved their goal (Delp et al.). These missions were unique due to the fact that each of these missions had different kinds of complications within them. The Apollo 7 and 9 were missions based on orbiting the Earth in order to perform test on the Command and Lunar modules. They did not also return lunar data. The Apollo also tested various components during the orbit around the Moon. The Apollo 13 also could land on the surface of the moon based on malfunction but eventually had returned photographs (Hui et al.). Each of the six missions that had landed on the surface of the moon had mostly returned a huge wealth of scientific data. They had also returned around 400 kilograms of lunar based samples. Some of the experiments conducted on the surface of moon also included meteoroids, soil mechanics, heat flow, lunar ranging, solar wind experiments and magnetic fields. The Apollo spacecraft that had landed on the surface of the moon were mainly launched on top of a three-staged Saturn V rocket. Based on the last three missions, the lunar module has carried a car, which was named as lunar rover. One of the most unique thing about the Apollo mission is that before the launch of the rocket, the Saturn V had suffered a sudden lightning strike. Within a few minutes, a second lighting strike had also wiped off the electrical systems of the rocket (Hui et al.). Despite such kind of oppositions and troubles before the beginning of the mission, the Apollo mission had made a successful landing on the surface on the moon and thus had hugely helped for performing deep exploration on the surface of Moon.

                                                                         (Fig 2: Apollo 11 Moon Landing)

                                                        (Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

On the other hand, the futuristic planned missions to Mars, which is known as the Mars 2020 rover mission is a subsidiary of the program of NASA’s Mars Exploration. This program has been a long-term effort based on the exploration of the red planet. The mission of Mars 2020 have been able to address the higher priority based goals of science based on mars exploration mission (Yingst et al.). These have included such kind of questions, which would be able to address the potential kind of questions based on the existence of life on Mars. The futuristic mission for exploration on Mars also took the next step based on not only seeking for signs of habitable conditions on Mars. This also included signs based on existence of past microbial life. The mars 2020 rover would also include a drill, which would be able to collect the core samples based on the most promising soils and rocks (Bridges et al.). The futuristic mission would also help in providing opportunities in order to gather knowledge and thus also demonstrate the use of technologies. This would eventually lead to addressing of challenges based on future human expedition to Mars. The futuristic mission also included testing of methods based on producing of oxygen within the Martian atmosphere (Hassler et al.). The mission also identifies various resources based on the improvement of landing techniques and also characterizing dust, weather and other kinds of potential environmental conditions,. This would also affect the works of future astronauts who would live and work on the red planet.

The Apollo Missions to the Moon

                                           (Fig 3: Planned Mars 2020 Rover incorporating seven unique instruments)

                                                             (Source: Craig, Troutman and Herrmann, pp. 4409)

The mission to the red planet is mainly timed for a launch, which is proposed in July or August in 2020. This would be the time when Mars and Earth would be in good positions and would be relative to each other based on the landing on Mars. Based on keeping the risks and costs of mission to be as low, the design of Mars would be based on a specially designed architecture. The Mars 2020 rover has also been designed in order to study the conditions of the rocks based on the processes of revealing of the geological patterns (Craig, Troutman and Herrmann). The mission would also be needed to be accomplished based on the demonstration of key technologies based on making use of natural resources within the Martian environment in order to support life on the red planet.

Based on the discussions from the above topic, it could be concluded that both of these explorations to Moon and Mars have been a major factor of demonstration of the progress of science and technology. With the help of such kind of discoveries, it could be pictured that both of these missions have a common form of objective. This would be based on finding various kinds of samples of both of these terrestrial bodies. Based on the collection of different kinds of samples such as soil and rock particles, it has been able to proceed further research on the planet. Investments within such kind of future technologies based on exploring Mars and Moon would be able to include contributions based on human exploration on the planet. This could be defined as a part of the long term efforts based on the development of various future capabilities for the major purpose of human space exploration.

References

Bridges, Nathan, et al. "Bedform migration on Mars: Current results and future plans." Aeolian Research 9 (2013): 133-151.

Cohen, Barbara A. "Lunar flashlight: mapping lunar surface volatiles using a CubeSat." (2015).

Craig, Douglas A., Patrick Troutman, and Nicole Herrmann. "Pioneering Space Through the Evolvable Mars Campaign." AIAA Space 2015 Conference and Exposition. 2015.

Delp, Michael D., et al. "Apollo lunar astronauts show higher cardiovascular disease mortality: possible deep space radiation effects on the vascular endothelium." Scientific reports 6 (2016): 29901.

Hassler, Donald M., et al. "Mars’ surface radiation environment measured with the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover." science 343.6169 (2014): 1244797.

Hui, Hejiu, et al. "Water in lunar anorthosites and evidence for a wet early Moon." Nature Geoscience 6.3 (2013): 177.

"National Aeronautics And Space Administration". NASA, 2018, https://www.nasa.gov/. Accessed 30 Dec 2018.

Wieczorek, Mark A., et al. "The crust of the Moon as seen by GRAIL." Science 339.6120 (2013): 671-675.

Yingst, R. A., et al. "Comparing Apollo and Mars Exploration Rover (MER)/phoenix operations paradigms for human exploration during NASA Desert-RATS science operations." Acta Astronautica 90.2 (2013): 311-317.

Zeitlin, C., et al. "Measurements of energetic particle radiation in transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory." science340.6136 (2013): 1080-1084.