"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 31 2006, 12:55 PM
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Guests |
QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jan 31 2006, 01:33 AM) In that case, I suggest a variation of the Pioneer Plaque where the male and female figures are replaced by a line drawing of you pointing towards yourself. Indeed, one might even include a comic strip-type "balloon" dialog box over your head with the words "This is all due to ME!!" Why do you think I quoted Dr. Lizardo in "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai"? Seriously, if I can help stir up the stew in a scientifically productive manner on this one, I'll be delighted. Lucey agrees with Jack Farmer that -- given the fact that Europa missions will be few and far between -- if we can find any way to jump ahead from simply confirming the existence of a Europan ocean to looking cheaply at an early stage of the exploration for actual biological evidence, we should do so. This seems to be the one possible way to do it, if penetrators can be made to work -- especially multiple penetrators. My further comments on this will all be over on the Europa threads. |
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