"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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Jan 30 2006, 09:35 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Perhaps you would have to have some sort of small solid stage that takes the thing down to a much lower velocity at a few km altitude, and let it fall from there.
I wonder - would a Europa Impactor work at a Discovery budget ( unlikely I'd have thought ) or are we talking New Frontiers post-Juno ( with some small relay ability installed on Juno to handle it?) Doug |
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