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Lockheed Milks Mars; Space Company Expects to Build Another Orbiter

Posted on: Saturday, 30 April 2005, 09:00 CDT

Lockheed Martin Space Systems is expected to land a NASA contract to design and build the $500 million Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, which the space agency said will pioneer the use of lasers for planet-to-planet communication.

NASA and the Jefferson County-based aerospace company are in negotiations expected to lead to the award of a design-and- construction contract in June, said Roger Gibbs, Mars Telecommunications Orbiter project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"I am excited to work with Lockheed Martin to put the next generation telecommunications orbiter in orbit around Mars," Gibbs said.

Known as MTO, the spacecraft is scheduled for launch in 2009 on a 10-year mission.

It will be the first in a planned network of Martian communications satellites. They will relay data collected by unmanned surface rovers, airplanes and balloons, Gibbs said.

MTO will be placed in orbit about 2,800 miles above the planet, more than 10 times higher than current Mars orbiters. From that vantage point, MTO will have a line of sight to Earth nearly all the time.

In addition to sending and receiving data from the Martian surface at radio and microwave frequencies, MTO will be the first spacecraft to demonstrate the use of laser communication between Earth and another planet.

The current plan calls for near-infrared lasers - which operate at wavelengths just beyond the range of the human eye - to beam information to the spacecraft from the 5-meter Hale Telescope at California's Palomar Observatory. Lasers on the orbiter will send data back to Earth.

Optical communication has the potential to transmit 10,000 times more data than microwaves, according to NASA.

The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter also will test techniques that will be needed to bring Martian rocks back to Earth.

An unmanned sample-return mission is slated for 2016 at the earliest, Gibbs said. As currently envisioned, robotic geologists would extract rock cores and load them into a metallic sphere that would be launched into Martian orbit.

An orbiting spacecraft would rendezvous with the sphere, capture it, and insert it into an Earth-return vehicle.

MTO will test the rendezvous portion of that intricate space ballet. It will release a soccer ball-size sphere equipped with a radio beacon.

The canister will drift for several thousand miles. Then the orbiter will attempt to track it down with cameras and radio receivers, maneuvering to within about 30 feet of the sphere.

Total project cost for the Telecommunications Orbiter - including the spacecraft, launch vehicle, science instruments and mission operations - will be around $500 million. The contract with Lockheed Martin to design, build and test the spacecraft will be less, but Gibbs would not discuss contract details.

The MTO design will be based largely on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, another NASA spacecraft built at Lockheed Martin's Waterton Canyon facility in Jefferson County.

On Friday afternoon, Reconnaissance Orbiter was flown from Buckley Air Force Base to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There it will be readied for an Aug. 10 launch.

Reconnaissance Orbiter will be the largest and most sophisticated spacecraft to orbit Mars. Lockheed Martin also built the Atlas V rocket that will launch it.

About 1,000 Lockheed Martin employees in Jefferson County worked on either the spacecraft or the rocket, said deputy program manager Dave Olschansky.

"This is an extremely important mission for us because of our involvement in both pieces," Olschansky said.

Two Lockheed Martin-built NASA probes - Odyssey and Global Surveyor - have been circling Mars for several years. Two others - Polar Lander and Climate Orbiter - failed in 1999.

INFOBOX

Lockheed's Mars contract

* Mission: NASA's Mars Telecommunications Orbiter

* Cost: About $500 million for the entire mission

* Status: NASA and Jefferson County-based Lockheed Martin space systems are negotiating a design-and-construction contract expected to be awarded in June.

* Launch: September 2009

* Goal: The spacecraft will serve as a data relay and will pioneer the use of lasers for planet-to-planet communication. Spacecraft also will test an orbital capture maneuver for a future sample-return mission.

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On the Net:

NASA

Lockheed Martin Space Systems

Source: Rocky Mountain News

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