14 DAY TRIAL // Later this year, the American space agency is scheduled to launch its newest planetary exploration rover, called the Mars Science Laboratory. Since the mission does not yet have an official landing site, experts will hold a fifth and final workshop in May, in a bid to settle on a location.
At this point, the NASA Mars Landing Site Steering Committee (MLSSC) has four final candidates to choose from, each of which entails its own risks, rewards, benefits and downsides. The goal of the workshop will be to determine which of these locations is worth it.
The workshop will be hosted at the DoubleTree Hotel in Monrovia, California, and will go on between May 16-18, 2011. NASA recently issued an open invitation for members of the scientific community, to attend the meeting and decided the outcome of the entire mission.
The MSL, now called Curiosity, is a flagship mission for NASA, and one of its most technologically complex to date. A lot of innovative, new technologies will need to work together in order to make this rover a success, and the agency wants to ensure it maximizes its scientific return from it.
The four final candidate sites are Eberswalde crater (23.8953*S, 326.7426*E), Gale crater (4.4868*S, 137.4239*E) Holden crater (26.4007*S, 325.1615*E), and Mawrth Vallis (23.9883*N, 341.0399*E).
During the workshop, members of the MLSSC will hear the latest results of scientific investigations related to each of these four locations. Afterwards, they will need to come to a final decision.
Experts in attendance will need to present the specific types of investigations that the robotic explorer will be able to perform at each of the sites, but only if these studies help accomplish mission objectives.
At the end of the meeting, panel members will compile a list of summary charts, that will include the pros and cons of each of the four locations. The analysis will be conducted so that scientists can easily determine which of the sites best compiles with the MSL list of mission objectives.
The Curiosity Project team will also consider new targets for exploration, that members of the international scientific community may propose within each of the four proposed landing sites.
Those proposing new exploration targets will present the scientific return they expect to get from the studies. They must also tell the panel which of the large suite of scientific instruments aboard the rover will be needed in order to complete the research.
This will be the last time that the MLSSC will come together. The four previous meetings discussed in length most aspects related to the candidate sites, and now it's time to decide, SpaceRef reports.