It would be cool if it could find Beagle2
The first color image:
Posted on 01/04/2004 10:08:45 AM PST by Orbital Velocity
They forgot about the little rover a few years back. This tells me that the British ecconomy is not big enough. It also tells me that this british author would be happiest if 0 dollars were spent on thses programs.
Since The Scotsman newspaper is not published in America, tell me why the hell should The Scotsman care what the American mission costs, much less splash a story about its costs (to Americans) all across its front page?
Well, I would:
"... remind them that their £45 million for Beagle is money down the drain with absolutely nothing to show for it, whereas our $400 million for Spirit will actually accomplish something."
And we come back full circle.
Mars Express orbiter instruments
HRSC
High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC)
The HRSC will image the entire planet in full colour, 3D and with a resolution of about 10 metres. Selected areas will be imaged at 2-metre resolution. One of the camera's greatest strengths will be the unprecedented pointing accuracy achieved by combining images at the two different resolutions. Another will be the 3D imaging which will reveal the topography of Mars in full colour.
"As the 2-metre resolution image is nested in a 10-metre resolution swath, we will know precisely where we are looking. The 2-metre resolution channel will allow us to just pick out the Beagle 2 lander on the surface," says Gerhard Neukum, HRSC Principal Investigator from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
OMEGA Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer
OMEGA will build up a map of surface composition in 100 m squares. It will determine mineral composition from the visible and infrared light reflected from the planet's surface in the wavelength range 0.5-5.2 millimetres. As light reflected from the surface must pass through the atmosphere before entering the instrument, OMEGA will also measure aspects of atmospheric composition.
"We want to know the iron content of the surface, the water content of the rocks and clay minerals and the abundance of non-silicate materials such as carbonates and nitrates," says Jean-Pierre Bibring, OMEGA PI from the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France.
SPICAM instrument
SPICAM Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer
SPICAM will determine the composition of the atmosphere from the wavelengths of light absorbed by the constituent gases. An ultraviolet (UV) sensor will measure ozone, which absorbs 250-nanometre light, and an infrared (IR) sensor will measure water vapour, which absorbs 1.38 micron light.
"Over the lifetime of the mission, we should be able to build up measurements of ozone and water vapour over the total surface of the planet for the different seasons," says Jean-Loup Bertaux, SPICAM PI from the Service d'Aeronomie du CNRS, Verrières-le-Buisson, France.
Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS)
The PFS will determine the composition of the Martian atmosphere from the wavelengths of sunlight (in the range 1.2-45 millimetres) absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere and from the infrared radiation they emit.
In particular, it will measure the vertical pressure and temperature profile of carbon dioxide which makes up 95% of the martian atmosphere, and look for minor constituents including water, carbon monoxide, methane and formaldehyde.
"We hope to get many, many measurements so that by taking the average of thousands we'll be able to see minor species," says Vittorio Formisano, PFS PI from Istituto Fisica Spazio Interplanetario, Rome, Italy.
ASPERA Energetic Neutral Atoms Analyser
ASPERA will measure ions, electrons and energetic neutral atoms in the outer atmosphere to reveal the numbers of oxygen and hydrogen atoms (the constituents of water) interacting with the solar wind and the regions of such interaction.
Constant bombardment by the stream of charged particles pouring out from the Sun, is thought to be responsible for the loss of Mars's atmosphere. The planet no longer has a global magnetic field to deflect the solar wind, which is consequently free to interact unhindered with atoms of atmospheric gas and sweep them out to space.
"We will be able to see this plasma escaping the planet and so estimate how much atmosphere has been lost over billions of years," says Rickard Lundin, ASPERA PI from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna, Sweden.
MaRS
Mars Radio Science Experiment (MaRS)
MaRS will use the radio signals that convey data and instructions between the spacecraft and Earth to probe the planet's ionosphere, atmosphere, surface and even the interior.
Information on the interior will be gleaned from the planet's gravity field, which will be calculated from changes in the velocity of the spacecraft relative to Earth. Surface roughness will be deduced from the way in which the radio waves are reflected from the Martian surface.
"Variations in the gravitational field of Mars will cause slight changes in the speed of the spacecraft relative to the ground station, which can be measured with an accuracy of less than one tenth the speed of a snail at full pace," says Martin Pätzold, MaRS PI from Köln University, Germany.
Mars Express with MARSIS antenna unfurled
MARSIS Sub-Surface Sounding Radar Altimeter
MARSIS will map the sub-surface structure to a depth of a few kilometres. The instrument's 40-metre long antenna will send low frequency radio waves towards the planet, which will be reflected from any surface they encounter.
For most, this will be the surface of Mars, but a significant fraction will travel through the crust to be reflected at sub-surface interfaces between layers of different material, including water or ice.
"We should be able to measure the thickness of sand deposits in dune areas, or determine whether there are layers of sediment sitting on top of other material," says Giovanni Picardi, MARSIS Principal Investigator from Universita di Roma 'La Sapienza', Rome, Italy. MARSIS will also study the ionosphere, as this electrically charged region of the upper atmosphere will reflect some radio waves.
It would be cool if it could find Beagle2
The first color image:
America: "The Eagle Has Landed."
UK: "The Beagle Has Pooped."
(Actually, I hope Beagle eventually succeeds.)
NASA's engineers of course substitute money for cleverness and inventiveness.
Seems like this is the first article to actually cast sour grapes at someone else's Mars program. However, by use of irony it is actually a hit piece on the European space program. The author is saying that Europe cannot afford to explore space and it is up to the Americans if we are ever going to get off this mudball.
Somewhere there's a child missing a brain.
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