A device created by Russian scientists is bidding for a chance to travel to Mars aboard NASA's Mars 2020 rover. In about five months or so, it will be clear whether NORD, the brainchild of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute, will participate in the mission. NASA launched a competition for Mars 2020 research proposals in September. By now, the application submission is already over.

Mars 2020 is due to succeed its elder brother, Curiosity, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012. The new rover will be based heavily on the design of Curiosity. The landing system and the chassis will be recreated without any additional engineering. This, NASA says, will reduce technical risks and make the project cheaper.

The main aim of the Curiosity mission was to find traces of past life-supporting environments on Mars. The goal has been achieved. Mars 2020 will look for traces of past life in those once-habitable environments.

Curiosity is equipped with DAN, a Russian-made neutron detector. DAN, or Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, measures the energy of neutrons leaking from the ground. It can detect water content as low as one-tenth of one percent as deep as 20 inches. If water is present, liquid or frozen, hydrogen atoms slow the neutrons down. These slower neutrons are measured by DAN.

"NORD has no generator. We replaced it with a gamma spectrometer designed to measure natural radiation on Mar's surface and analyze the chemical composition of Martian soil in areas explored by the rover," Igor Mitrofanov, an IKI laboratory chief, told reporters.

NORD will help Mars 2020 rover figure out how humans can best use the red planet's resources and which parts of Mars are the most suitable habitats for humans in terms of minerals. The rock and soil samples collected by Nord will be stored inside Mars 2020 for several years until a new spacecraft arrives and takes them over. It will then have to blast off to Earth - a complicated task, much more difficult than even blasting off from Moon, as it requires a rocket powerful enough to escape Mars' gravity.

Source: Voice of Russia