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"thor" Mars Mission To Seek Underground Water
RNeuhaus
post Jan 26 2006, 03:46 PM
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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 smile.gif It would cost around US$ 450 millions

More details: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/THOR_Mar...ound_Water.html

Rodolfo
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djellison
post Jan 30 2006, 09:35 PM
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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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Bob Shaw
post Jan 30 2006, 09:42 PM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 30 2006, 10:35 PM)
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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Doug:

Or a two stage penetrator, with a sacrificial leading module which blasts a hole and a solid motor deceleration stage which would pop the instrument module down the hole, perhaps with a heat shield which would ablate away against the hot gases produced by the leading module. It'd be like firing two bullets through the eye of a needle, but could be a very cheap way to organise some landings!

Bob Shaw


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Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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helvick
post Jan 30 2006, 11:42 PM
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The news reports on this talk about a 250kg impactor making a 30m diameter crater.

Making use of the ever useful LPL "Computing Crater Size from Projectile Diameter" Calculator it seems that in order to create a crater on Mars with ~30m diameter crater using a 250kg copper impactor (0.38m diameter) it needs to hit the surface at around 2.5km/sec.

However using the LPL Earth Impact Calculator I cannot get a simple copper sphere of that size to hit the ground - it vapourizes at any atmospheric speed over ~43km/sec which yields a terminal velocity of only 1.2km/sec. At any speed over that the impactor disintigrates. The Martian atmosphere is obviously different but I think that for the purposes of this exercise it is not that different where it matters (at the high altitude where it explodes).

So it will obviously need to be shaped and shielded in some fashion in order to survive atmospheric entry.

Does anyone know what the mars approach velocity is likely to be if it is going to be a 2 part craft with the other part being an orbiter? I suspect that in order to create a crater of this size we'd need 2 separate mission components, one component being a high velocity impactor and the second component the orbiter on a separate trajectory probably launched much earlier so it can avail of a standard Mars capture transfer orbit.
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Posts in this topic
- RNeuhaus   "thor" Mars Mission To Seek Underground Water   Jan 26 2006, 03:46 PM
- - Marz   QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jan 26 2006, 09:46 AM)THOR ...   Jan 26 2006, 05:06 PM
|- - gpurcell   QUOTE (Marz @ Jan 26 2006, 05:06 PM)When all ...   Jan 26 2006, 05:09 PM
- - djellison   I suppose you have MRO there to image the crater a...   Jan 26 2006, 05:12 PM
- - Chmee   Strange that this would be named THOR since that w...   Jan 26 2006, 05:18 PM
|- - MahFL   And what would the chances of say hitting MSL by a...   Jan 26 2006, 06:03 PM
- - Canopus   The search for methane will also be included. Hop...   Jan 26 2006, 06:07 PM
- - RNeuhaus   Hope that the impactor would make a crater close e...   Jan 26 2006, 07:05 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   The "Thor" name applied to both projects...   Jan 26 2006, 11:04 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 26 2006, 11:04 PM)It...   Jan 27 2006, 03:59 PM
- - djellison   Thor-Able was a precursor to the modern Delta LV...   Jan 26 2006, 11:08 PM
|- - mchan   QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 26 2006, 03:08 PM)Thor...   Jan 27 2006, 02:19 AM
|- - exobioquest   I would rather see a mars atmospheric sample retur...   Jan 27 2006, 02:23 AM
|- - nprev   QUOTE (exobioquest @ Jan 26 2006, 07:23 PM)I ...   Jan 27 2006, 02:29 AM
|- - exobioquest   Wait a minute isn't there a free return orbit ...   Jan 27 2006, 03:25 AM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (nprev @ Jan 26 2006, 08:29 PM)Hmm. Yes...   Jan 27 2006, 04:09 AM
- - lyford   the thunder god went for a ride upon his favorite ...   Jan 27 2006, 05:50 AM
- - nprev   ...I actually was thinking of an old Mother Goose ...   Jan 28 2006, 06:20 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   No seismometer on Phoenix or MSL; but there curren...   Jan 29 2006, 03:41 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 28 2006, 10:41 PM)No...   Jan 29 2006, 03:48 AM
|- - nprev   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 28 2006, 08:41 PM)No...   Jan 29 2006, 06:21 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jan 27 2006, 03:59 PM)...   Jan 29 2006, 03:43 AM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 29 2006, 03:43 AM)La...   Jan 30 2006, 06:40 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   The inability of the Viking 2 seismometer to detec...   Jan 29 2006, 04:15 AM
- - edstrick   Note that the Viking seismometer <VL-2> did ...   Jan 29 2006, 11:12 AM
- - edstrick   Oh.. and Phoenix is not expected to have an extend...   Jan 29 2006, 11:18 AM
- - hal_9000   opera mini test   Jan 30 2006, 07:48 PM
- - djellison   Martian penetrators I can understand, a couple of ...   Jan 30 2006, 08:02 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 30 2006, 09:02 PM)Mart...   Jan 30 2006, 09:20 PM
- - djellison   Perhaps you would have to have some sort of small ...   Jan 30 2006, 09:35 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 30 2006, 10:35 PM)Perh...   Jan 30 2006, 09:42 PM
|- - helvick   The news reports on this talk about a 250kg impact...   Jan 30 2006, 11:42 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   The Europa Penetrator story, as I hinted earlier, ...   Jan 31 2006, 12:50 AM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 31 2006, 12:50 AM)Bu...   Jan 31 2006, 01:33 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 30 2006, 07:50 PM)Bu...   Jan 31 2006, 02:53 PM
- - RNeuhaus   More details about the Thor's project extracte...   Jan 31 2006, 03:09 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   A THOR-style impact mission might be the best reas...   Jan 31 2006, 10:43 AM
||- - helvick   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jan 31 2006, 11:43 AM)Why n...   Jan 31 2006, 12:13 PM
||- - paxdan   QUOTE (helvick @ Jan 31 2006, 12:13 PM)We dea...   Jan 31 2006, 12:34 PM
||- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (paxdan @ Jan 31 2006, 01:34 PM)two oth...   Jan 31 2006, 12:45 PM
||- - dvandorn   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jan 31 2006, 06:45 AM)It wo...   Jan 31 2006, 03:02 PM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Jan 31 2006, 03:09 AM)The p...   Jan 31 2006, 11:04 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jan 31 2006, 01:33 AM)...   Jan 31 2006, 12:55 PM
- - Analyst   I can't see a lot of science coming from this ...   Jan 31 2006, 02:17 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jan 31 2006, 02:53 PM)Wo...   Jan 31 2006, 04:33 PM
- - djellison   "This Crater © B.Moomaw 2018"   Jan 31 2006, 04:39 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   That would be even more appropriate, since I'v...   Jan 31 2006, 09:22 PM


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