"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, 03:41 AM
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Guests |
No seismometer on Phoenix or MSL; but there currently IS a plan to include one as part of a detechable package of geophysical instruments that will be left behind at the landing site by the ESA's ExoMars rover in 2011 -- the first of a hoped-for series of replacements for the Netlanders. if the ESA actually funds ExoMars and it lands successfully before the Mars Scout (which are very big "ifs"), it might be able to pick up the thud.
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Jan 29 2006, 06:21 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 28 2006, 08:41 PM) No seismometer on Phoenix or MSL; but there currently IS a plan to include one as part of a detechable package of geophysical instruments that will be left behind at the landing site by the ESA's ExoMars rover in 2011 -- the first of a hoped-for series of replacements for the Netlanders. if the ESA actually funds ExoMars and it lands successfully before the Mars Scout (which are very big "ifs"), it might be able to pick up the thud. Pity; Thor would be all the more beneficial if it could be used for gross internal geophysics as well. Is it too late (or financially impossible) to add a seismometer-equipped Deep Space 2-type penetrometer on Phoenix to exploit Thor if the latter is approved, or has Phoenix PO system engineering decided to minimize mission risk by avoiding emulation of MPL as much as possible? -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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