Mars Stratigraphy Mission (1999 Proposal) Options

[stevesliva]

Very cool post about a mission proposal that I do not recall here:
http://altairvi.blogspot.com/2008/10/mars-...ssion-1999.html

The rover would need no more than 50 days to travel to the canyon rim. Once there, it would anchor the end of a tether to the ground and, paying out the tether behind it, rappel into the six-kilometer-deep canyon.

The rover would slowly descend, reaching a depth of at least two kilometers in 200 days. It would halt its descent every meter to determine the composition of the rock layers making up the canyon wall using Raman and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and a multispectral camera. Every 100 meters, it would collect a five-centimeter-long rock core and analyze it to age-date the rock layers.

Roving vertically! Neat.

[imipak]

Sounds reminiscent of Cliffbot - I remember reading about field trials of this in Svalbad on one of the AMASE expeditions; that link's a pretty random pick from the first page of Google results, there's tons of other info on this very interesting project. *sigh* So much interesting stuff, so little time!