Posted on 01/26/2006 10:43:05 AM PST by blam
'Wrecking ball' could break the ice on Mars
11:58 26 January 2006
NewScientist.com news service
MAggie McKee
Orbital images show what appear to be glacier-like features in the mid-latitudes of Mars (Image: A Nahm/Brown University)
A plan to drop a quarter-tonne copper ball through Mars's atmosphere and study the ejecta it blasts away from the planet's surface on impact is to be proposed to NASA.
The mission, called THOR, would test models suggesting the planet's tilt – and therefore its climate – swings through extreme changes every 50,000 years.
Robotic landers and rovers have previously visited the Red Planet's equatorial regions, and an upcoming mission called Phoenix is due to touch down near the north pole in 2008. But no probe has visited the planet's mid-latitudes, where gullies and glacier-like features suggest there may be large amounts of pure water ice beneath a layer of dusty soil.
Now, researchers led by Phil Christensen at Arizona State University in Tempe, US, are proposing a mission to search for that ice directly. The idea behind THOR (Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources) is to fly an observer spacecraft to Mars and, hours before it reaches the planet, release an "impactor" ball. It could be up to 230 kilograms in mass and would be aimed at a region about 40° north or south of the equator.
The impactor, likely to be a giant copper sphere, would crash to the surface at more than 4 kilometres per second, blasting a crater about 10 metres deep. Meanwhile, the observer spacecraft would record the event from orbit, studying the composition of the ejected soil with spectrometers.
Pure snow
"It's neat because it's a brute force way to gain access to the subsurface of Mars," says David Spencer, a team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. "The impactor will be very simple and we'll get our first look at material from that depth."
Christensen says that will provide a crucial test for models of Mars's past climate. "The climate models predict that as the orbit of Mars evolves, the tilt of its spin axis changes," he told New Scientist. Over a 50,000-year timescale, the planet can tilt from 10° to 40° – or anywhere in between, he says.
When the planet is tilted most drastically on its side, the planet's poles receive a lot of sunshine. Any water locked in ice there is thought to vaporise and move towards the equator, where it falls as snow. "The climate can change dramatically and deposit as much as 10 or 20 metres of pretty much pure snow in the mid-latitudes," Christensen says.
Reconnaissance mission
THOR, named after the hammer-wielding Norse god of thunder, would prove this snow theory right if it measures mostly water in the plume of ejected material, he says. But if it reveals mostly dirt, that would lead researchers back to the drawing board, he says: "Maybe the idea of climate change, and tilt, and the deposition of snow [is wrong], or maybe not as much ice moves around."
The mission would also be able to detect organic compounds, such as methane, in the ejecta and the atmosphere. The compounds are intriguing because they might signal the presence of life, but THOR would not carry the instruments to prove it unequivocally.
"I view this as a reconnaissance mission to see if these regions are rich in ice," says Christensen. "And if they are, to use that as a rationale to go back to these regions with future rovers and explore them in more detail."
Christensen's team will submit a preliminary proposal for the $450 million mission to NASA in July. If it is selected to fly, it could launch as soon as 2011.
The cheap way to do this is to go to Texas A&M and have them fire a rock at Mars using a rail gun they have.
i see a face
Too bad the Stargate system doesn't exist.
Didn't we already bounce a probe off Mars a few years ago?
But won't the Martians be really ticked?
Art Bell (((PING)))?
Why waste the copper? Drop something unimportant, like Michael Moore.
So they would have you believe...
=)
Nice. But they should also have a "spirit" type lander along that can land afterwards and go check out the new crater up close.
Why waste the copper? Drop something unimportant, like Michael Moore.
"The cheap way to do this is to go to Texas A&M and have them fire a rock at Mars using a rail gun they have."
I don't believe they have a rail gun capable of velocities that exceed the escape velocity from Earth.
Finally, the ice will release the oxygen to the Marian atmosphere. It has been far too long that the Vilos Cohaagen has kept the Martian ice frozen under the surface. All thanks to Douglas Quaid/Hauser.
[mattdono stops. friend whispers into his ear]. You mean, we're not talking about the plot for one of the greatest movies ever, Total Recall?
Oh, ok. Um, nevermind. [wink]
They're calling it THOR? Then they have the wrong planet. They need to name it after the god of war, and call it TIW (Tracing Icy Wreckage).
Most great science fiction movies are from books and short stories written by Phillip K. Dick
I'm still waiting for the film treatment of "Counter Clock World"
http://www.punkinchunkin.com/main.htm
Fire an orange orb at it.
Ubik would be good as well. So would The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
But they are a bit obscure and would probably make Dune seem like The Cat in The Hat by comparison.
Phillip Kendall Dick was the greatest science fiction writer ever.
If you haven't read Valis, get it. Very autobiographical.
good practice for Rods from GodThat's what we should be using, instead of the ball.
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