Space Exploration Technologies Corporation or SpaceX has identified potential landing sites on Mars for both its Red Dragon, an unmanned spacecraft, and future human missions as presented on a symposium on March 18.
Working for SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services, Paul Wooster juggles between many roles, as a manager of guidance, navigation and control systems on SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. He stated that the landing sites were selected basing on several criteria.
SpaceX is looking for a space to land on Mars
For this exploration to be successful, landing sites should have access to large quantities of ice near the surface or be close to the equator and at a low elevation for a safer access of solar power and thermal condition.
“It’s probably hard to find that along with ice,” said Wooster who focused instead on four locations within 40 degrees from the equator.
Through images sent from a medium resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter called CTX (Context Camera), Wooster and his team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), identified three regions that met basic criteria – Deuteronilus Mensae, Phlegra Montes and Utopia Planitia.
However, while the images from CTX look very flat and smooth, ideal for human settlement, on High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera ), the said images were quite rocky. Therefore, those sites were not good opportunities to establish a human settlement in Mars.
But the fourth region, Arcadia Planitia, shows few or no rocks based on HiRISE images.
These landing sites are essential to SpaceX’s business growth as part of establishing a human settlement on Mars through their aerospace transportation services.
Instead of sending off people to Mars this 2018, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell would delay its launch. Wooster defended that the delay has nothing to do with Red Dragon.
Since Red Dragon will take off in 2020 instead of 2018, the scheduled first people-carrying voyage to Mars will be pushed back to 2027 instead of 2025. We’ll see what happens next with SpaceX’s timeline.