Volume 5, Number 1     January/February 1997

  Welcome to Innovation

Aerospace Technology Innovation

by Robert Norwood

ASA HAS REACHED A MAJOR MILESTONE IN our new approach to smaller, faster and cheaper spacecraft. In the summer of 1994, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin announced a new initiative for smaller NASA spacecraft launching the Agency on a new course, and implementing a new way of doing business. This initiative epitomized the "faster, better, cheaper" approach to spacecraft development and highlighted NASA's new, leaner management style. It revolutionized the way NASA and its industry partners design, build, launch and operate small spacecraft for scientific missions and commercial activities in space.

The initiative was and continues to be extremely important, not only to future NASA missions, but to the U.S. position in the global commercial small satellites market. With participation from large and small companies and minority firms and universities, this initiative strengthens the U.S. competitive position in the small spacecraft market. Developing the technology baseline for small, highly reliable spacecraft for commercial space ventures will create the basis for and accelerate the introduction of lower-cost constellations of spacecraft for application to global communications, remote sensing or other broad-area, information-based networks.

One significant result of this new approach to smaller, cheaper spacecraft was a class of spacecraft suited to the Discovery science missions. One of those missions entailed a small Mars Pathfinder spacecraft scheduled to land on the the planet Mars in the summer of 1997. As promised in the announcement two years ago, NASA has launched the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft on its historic mission to realize our new family of small spacecraft based on advanced technology (some of which has been reported in Innovation) and to explore Mars with a robot.

Mars Pathfinder will land on Mars, open up and allow a six-wheeled robotic rover to drive out and begin exploring the Martian terrain. Pathfinder was launched on December 4, 1996 aboard a Delta rocket. This is just one month after the launch of Mars Global Surveyor. The single spacecraft will cruise directly to Mars, enter the atmosphere with a Viking-derived heat shield and land with the aid of parachutes, rockets and airbags.

Landing of the Pathfinder rover, named Sojourner after Sojourner Truth, a great American pioneer, is scheduled for July 4, 1997 at the mouth of an ancient outflow channel called Ares Vallis, near the site of the 1976 Viking 1 lander in Chryse Planitia. The site was chosen for the variety of rock and soil samples it may present.

A small 10-kilogram (22-pound) rover will be carried on the Pathfinder and become the first rover ever to explore the Martian surface. The rover is mounted on one of four panels on the tetrahedal-shaped lander and tied down with a connector that will be separated. After landing, the Pathfinder lander will deploy its three solar panels for power, the camera will view the surroundings and the rover will be positioned for deployment. Rolling down a deployment ramp, the rover will then be independent to explore the surface, using the only lander data and communications functions for contact with Earth. After the lander transmits its engineering data and panoramic image of the Martian landscape to Earth, much of its mission will be focused on supporting the rover with imaging telecommunications and data storage. Data will be relayed back to Earth for about a month. If the lander and rover remain in working condition, the mission could be extended up to one year.

We are very excited about this new NASA mission and the introduction of innovative technology to benefit the new family of scientific and commercial spacecraft as well as non-aerospace commercial and educational products. We will provide updates on these developments in the future.