Final Project

Seth Y.

Legislator:  Jane Nelson, Senator

When I think of Mars, I think of opportunity.  If/When humans land on Mars I think that (after establishing the necessary life support systems/structures, etc.) we could build a station on the surface of Mars that could send and receive signals from Earth without generating a lot of power.  All you would have to do is point it towards Earth.  This station would transmit and receive anything from data and audio to streaming color video, and could also be used for future missions and explorations to the outer regions of the solar system.  The station would be highly modular, so it could be shipped to Mars piece by piece.  This allows for easy shipping and handling as well as the ability to interchange parts.  What I mean is that if a component of the station malfunctions or becomes obsolete as a result of newer technology it could simply be exchanged for a newer, working part.  The station would initially run on nuclear power, because it is more compact and would be easier to send to Mars.  However, over time, solar panels could be sent to the planet and set up so that the station could upgrade to solar power.  The station would be both microwave and laser based and would start out at a few dozen to a hundred watts of radiated power, later advancing to kilowatts.  The laser would be used as the primary broadcasting device, sending data on high bandwidth transmissions.  However, since lasers cannot travel through clouds, you would need an alternate transmitting device that could.  This is where the microwaves come in.  X-band microwaves run at about a 10 GHz frequency, and although lower in bandwidth, they can be used during bad weather or cloudy days as a backup to the laser.  Transmitting low baud rate audio signals takes fairly little power that can come from the microwave, but it takes a healthy transmitter to transmit at video baud rates and keep the transmission error rate low.  This Martian-based transmitter station could then act as a repeater station for exploratory missions to the outer solar system, by boosting signals from distant probes and upping the data rate and lowering the error rate.

Last Updated:  09/10/01