"thor" Mars Mission To Seek Underground Water |
"thor" Mars Mission To Seek Underground Water |
Jan 26 2006, 03:46 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1636 Joined: 9-May 05 From: Lima, Peru Member No.: 385 |
A new, low-cost mission concept to Mars would slam a projectile into the planet's surface in an attempt to look for subsurface water ice.
"I'm interested in exploring mid-latitude areas of Mars that look like they're made of snow and ice," Phil Christensen, the project's principal investigator, told SpaceDaily.com. Christensen, of Arizona State University, and colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are proposing a mission called THOR – for Tracing Habitability, Organics and Resources – as part of NASA's Mars Scout program. Like last year's Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1, THOR aims to ram a projectile at high speed into the surface of Mars while a host spacecraft remains in orbit and observes the impact and its aftermath. If approved by NASA, the mission would launch in 2011. That mission would be after MSL's mission. Now it is still a proposal It would cost around US$ 450 millions More details: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/THOR_Mar...ound_Water.html Rodolfo |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Jan 29 2006, 04:15 AM
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Guests |
The inability of the Viking 2 seismometer to detect any provable quake at all over 2 1/2 years was indeed the reason why the US put the kibosh on seismometers since then. It made it clear that Mars' seismicity level was low enough that you need a highly sensitive seismometer directly coupled to the ground, with a low profile to avoid wind noises -- that is, a lander or package specifically designed for the purpose. Also, you must lay at least two or three down simultaneously to locate any epicenters -- and, except for the 2003 rovers (which were obviously unsuitable), all Mars landers since the Vikings have been singletons except for the disastrous Russian attempt to set up network science (including five seismometers) with Mars 96. (The original design for Mars Pathfinder DID call for the rover to deposit a tiny seismometer on the surface -- linked to the lander by a cable -- as well as for a neutron spectrometer on the rover; but those two instruments very quickly got the boot due to weight problems.)
The new US Mars plan calls for a Mars science network mission in 2020; but there was some interest at MEPAG in trying to advance it to 2016 (an idea I aftually oppose for reasons I won't go into here). And of course it's possible that the 2011 or 2018 Mars Scout might consist of a network of very small seismic landers, or that the ESA might succeed in gradually laying down a network. (The Network Science Mission would also seem an obvious choice for an international effort, and MEPAG has suggested just that.) |
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