[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

[RNeuhaus]

More details about the Thor's project extracted from recently published by National Geographic.

THOR Spacecraft to Hammer Out Huge Crater on Mars
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
January 30, 2006

NASA's THOR mission may blast an enormous crater on Mars to search for water ice in latitudes that could support life on the red planet.

The proposed mission aims to break new ground in search of the truth.

"At the moment, the deepest we've dug on Mars is probably a foot [30 centimeters]," he continued.

It must have done by Spirit or Oppy a big hole, which of them?

"A lot of people, myself included, believe that the upper surface may be dry and desiccated, bombarded with ultraviolet rays, and that the interesting stuff may not start until you're down a meter or two [three to seven feet]."

Water is very near from the surface. I don't seem it but even deeper in the equatorial zone because, that zone has the temperature higher than melting point during the summer time so when the water becomes liquid and it is sublimited away due to low atmosphere pressure.

THOR (Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources) is one of several candidate projects up for the latest round of Mars Scout grants. NASA will narrow its list to three contenders by November of this year and will make a final decision on a winner by January 2008.

The mission, scheduled for a 2011 launch and an arrival at Mars in late 2012, is led by Arizona State University in Tempe and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) based at the California Institute of Technology.

Next year, we are going to know about the reality of this project.

"With such a large target region on Mars, delivering THOR's impactor will be less challenging than the Deep Impact comet encounter," Spencer said.

That is pity, MSL won't be close enough to take pictures during the impact and later sniff the steamed crater.

THOR's collision would occur at a random location in a visually intriguing but unexplored area of Mars—the planet's middle latitudes between 30° and 60° in either hemisphere.

Images of these regions suggest tantalizing evidence of dust-covered layers of snow or ice.

Out of place where Spirit and Oppy are located.

Much more details, click here.

Finally, it seems that the Thor project would be ONE cooper impacter and not multiples impacters plus one orbiter.

Rodolfo

[djellison]

The proposed mission aims to break new ground in search of the truth.

"At the moment, the deepest we've dug on Mars is probably a foot [30 centimeters]," he continued.

It must have done by Spirit or Oppy a big hole, which of them?

Oh - they've both trenched to that sort of depth I'd say

Doug