[X] My Assistant

[RNeuhaus]

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

[djellison]

Thor-Able was a precursor to the modern Delta LV's iirc, and there's one about 5 miles from here at the National Space Centre

http://moblog.co.uk/view.php?id=47689

Doug

[Guest_exobioquest_*]

I would rather see a mars atmospheric sample return probe for 2011, which seems to have the best science per dollar ratio. But slamming a probe into mars does sounds cheap, a lot cheaper then $450 million!, I mean all you need a very simpler probe with a mission life of 6-9months, and a lot of dead weight, lets see a 1000kg probe going at 4km/s would produce about 8,000,000,000 joules or ~1.9 metric tons of TNT in energy, about the size of a large dumb bomb.

[nprev]

I would rather see a mars atmospheric sample return probe for 2011, which seems to have the best science per dollar ratio. But slamming a probe into mars does sounds cheap, a lot cheaper then $450 million!, I mean all you need a very simpler probe with a mission life of 6-9months, and a lot of dead weight, lets see a 1000kg probe going at 4km/s would produce about 8,000,000,000 joules or ~1.9 metric tons of TNT in energy, about the size of a large dumb bomb.

Hmm. Yes, that much kinetic energy would leave anything Thor...

(runs for cover...)