Key telecommunications technologies for increasing data return for future Mars exploration

Abstract

NASA's plans for Mars exploration demand increasing telecommunications capabilities in the coming decades. Ambitious robotic missions will deploy high-rate instruments in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface, with increasing spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution. Orbiters will require high-performance direct-to-Earth links, while landed missions will benefit from energy-efficient communications through relay-equipped orbiters to increase data return while minimizing landed mass. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Exploration Rovers define the current state-of-the-art for Martian orbiters and landers, respectively. Even with respect to these capabilities, however, significant growth appears to be very feasible based on infusion of relatively mature technologies. Deployable spacecraft antennas, high-power traveling wave tube amplifiers, and migration to Ka-band provide a path to much higher spacecraft equivalent isotropic radiated power. When combined with proposed upgrades to the Deep Space Network, future orbiters can envision downlink rates more than two orders of magnitude beyond current capability. Similar growth can be achieved on relay links between landers and relay orbiters, based on improved relay capabilities which can be infused into the current generation of Electra software-defined relay radios, and by migration to high-frequency directional relay links.