One of the things we tend to forget about, because it is working quietly in the background, is the communications network.\u00a0 Most of the data from Curiosity is returned via Mars Reconnaissance\u00a0Orbiter (MRO)\u00a0and Mars Odyssey.\u00a0 We use\u00a0extremely high frequencies (Ka band).\u00a0 However, Mars Express (the European Orbiter) transmitted back some of the ChemCam data during October last year.\u00a0 It also acted as a backup during Entry, Descent and Landing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As more landers are planned for Mars (2016 Entry Descent Module; 2016 InSight seismometer mission; ExoMars 2018; MSL2020) there will be a greater demand for data handling capacity.\u00a0 A new ultra high transceiver for the ExoMars 2016 orbiter called MELACOM,\u00a0has the potential to increase data return rates by a factor of 4.\u00a0 Currently we get about about 100 Mbits of data per day via MRO and Odyssey.\u00a0 Matthew Cosby of\u00a0QinetiQ Space UK, in a visit to the University of Leicester, described how this new technology together with more efficient networks on Earth, could lead to greatly improved data return and one day even a form of interplanetary internet connection.<\/p>\n
This new technology\u00a0was developed for\u00a0the lightweight communications transceiver\u00a0on the Beagle2 mission in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things we tend to forget about, because it is working quietly in the background, is the communications network.\u00a0 Most of the data from Curiosity is returned via Mars Reconnaissance\u00a0Orbiter (MRO)\u00a0and Mars Odyssey.\u00a0 We use\u00a0extremely high frequencies (Ka band).\u00a0 However, Mars Express (the European Orbiter) transmitted back some of the ChemCam data during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}