"Everything for the NextSTEP contract is to validate technologies to eventually go to Mars. "We would use the lunar habitat to prove out the technology to serve as a baseline for habitats for future deep space missions beyond the Moon," Hauf tells CNBC Make It. The interior of Lockheed Martin's lunar module - the capsule astronauts would live in on their way to the moon (a rendering of which is embedded below) - is also a template for the prototype Lockheed Martin will use to build a habitat for taking humans to deep space. In August of this year, Lockheed Martin, the aerospace company, officially announced it started "bending metal" (a.k.a, started construction) on its prototype, company spokesperson Danielle Hauf tells CNBC Make It. In August 2016, the companies were given "approximately" 24 months to deliver the results of their innovative work. "NASA is on an ambitious expansion of human spaceflight, including the journey to Mars, and we're utilizing the innovation, skill and knowledge of both the government and private sectors," said Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems, said when the companies were announced. One of the specific projects for NextSTEP is habitation systems, which "provide a safe place for humans to live as we move beyond Earth on our Journey to Mars," NASA says. The screensaver, a joint effort of JPL and Berkeley Systems, was developed by the Mars exploration program and JPL's Supercomputing Project, with support from NASA's Office of Space Science.The partnership between the public companies and NASA is called NextSTEP and aims to support "commercial development of deep space exploration capabilities to support more extensive human spaceflight missions in and beyond cislunar space -the space near Earth that extends just beyond the Moon," NASA says. The images seen in both of the screensavers' modules were created at JPL on its CRAY T3D parallel processor, part of JPL's Supercomputing Project. To complete the download, users will need Version 4.0 of the "After Dark" screensaver software produced by Berkeley Systems, Inc. It can be downloaded from the JPL Mars home page at: The screensaver, titled Mars Exploration Program: A New Trail to the Red Planet, is available on the Internet in versions tailored for those with Windows '95 or Macintosh software. The closing sequence shows a Viking photograph of Pathfinder's targeted landing site, Ares Valles, an ancient flood plain. Circling Mars every two hours, it is designed to provide global maps of surface topography, distribution of minerals, and monitoring of global weather.ĭepicting the very regions of Mars that will be photographed by Surveyor, the screensaver zeroes in on the planet, depicting increasing detail of such prominent features as Olympus Mons, a towering volcano, and Valles Marineris, a huge canyon. Surveyor, which reaches Mars this September, will orbit for one full Martian year, or 687 days, taking new images while measuring the red planet's atmosphere and surface. In addition to the rover sequences, the screensaver features a second module devoted to the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, launched last November. Both missions, rocketing into space last fall, heralded the debut of a decade-long NASA program of robotic exploration of Mars. The screensaver was designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as part of an effort to educate the public about the Mars Pathfinder mission and the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. It will be the first rover ever to land on Mars. Sojourner, which is able to scale rocks up to its own size and to steer around larger ones, features miniaturized electronics and such innovative technologies as a six-wheeled "rocker-bogie" suspension system. The rover animation sequence depicts the 60-centimeter (23-inch)- long microrover that will drive out onto the surface of Mars to explore the composition of rocks and soil after landing in the mouth of Ares Valles, an outflow channel, early this July. This imaginative screensaver also features an animated version of Sojourner, launched last December on the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, as it climbs over or navigates around Martian boulders. Scientists used these very images to decide where they will land the Sojourner microrover this summer. Three-dimensional, computer-rendered images of Mars and its surfaces are featured in a free screensaver now available on the Internet.
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