NASA studies Mars water in hope of mission

PASADENA, Calif (Reuters) - A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars is using the most powerful cameras ever pointed at the Red Planet to study its climate cycles and whether there is enough water to support a manned mission, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Monday.

Images taken during a test of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's instruments showed clay-rich areas that could have supported life and frost, and layered deposits of ice and dirt at the polar ice cap indicate "dynamic climate changes" as recently as 100,000 years ago, scientist Scott Murchie told reporters.

"We are seeing a new Mars," project scientist Richard Zurek said at a news conference. "We are seeing information comparable to, or better than, what you could see flying over Earth in a commercial airliner."

Launched in August 2005, the orbiter dropped into a low orbit around Mars last month to map the planet's subsurface minerals, monitor its atmosphere and look for evidence of enough subsurface ice or water to process into oxygen, concrete and rocket fuel for manned exploration.

President George W. Bush has urged NASA to focus on getting people to the moon and Mars, although a manned mission to Mars is still many years away.

The Mars orbiter has the most advanced and powerful instruments of four science satellites circling the planet and will return more than 10 times the quantity of data during its two-year mission than all the other probes combined.

The orbiter will also use HiRISE, its super high-resolution camera, to find landing sites for the Phoenix Mars Lander, set to arrive in 2008, and for the 2009 arrival of the Mars Science Laboratory, a larger version of the twin robotic geologists Spirit and Opportunity, which have been traversing the planet's surface since 2004.

The super high-resolution photographs, snapped from 180 miles above the planet's surface and showing chair-sized details, show how water carved the arid planet's landscape into fan-shaped soil deposits, deep cut chasms and gullies and layers of ice and dust.

In the Mawrth Vallis region near Mars' midsection, spectrometry of the eroded surface revealed clay deposits that formed in a variety of wet conditions such as standing water and streams, Murchie said.

The conditions could have given rise to microorganic life on ancient Mars, Murchie said.

The orbiter's cameras also recorded melting frost in the folds of gullies and hummocks near the edge of the Terra Sirenum crater in Mars' southern hemisphere.

"This is something that formed over a number of events. Water flowed in this area and was geologically recent. The water dates from the current geological age," mission scientist Alfred McEwan said.

Images of Chasma Boreale, a valley that cuts deeply into the northern polar cap, showed layers of ice and dirt whose composition varied widely, a sign of radical climate change.

The composition of oldest layer of polar cap ice was similar to the newest, meaning that the concentration of dust in the Martian atmosphere could be influenced by planetary movement.

The scientists have already gathering data that they hope will tell them how much water vapor escaped the planet's relatively thin upper atmosphere.

The first major mission to Mars should not be manned, it should be carried out by large construction robots, powered by a small nuclear reactor. The reasons are common sense.

1) Robots are on a one-way mission, so it can be substantially larger and more massive than a manned mission. Their spacecraft itself can be designed to be cannibalized for parts for their missions.

2) Robots have no time constraints. Even if they work at a slow pace, they can do it for years before people arrive. This is work that otherwise people would have to do at great expense and limited resources.

3) Much of what robots will do is "unscientific", such as digging hard rock tunnels for use as human habitations. If you don't need a human to do it, it's better to have a robot do it.

4) Robots can also find, mine and store water in habitat cisterns. In doing just these two things, digging and reinforcing tunnels and mining potable water, the duration of human missions could be extended by a year or two.

5) To get to Mars and back, an large orbital "shuttle" spacecraft may be built, which does not land. It carries other spaceships back and forth, to and from Mars orbit, so these manned ships can carry cargo instead of fuel. By sending robots first, it would be a good way to test this shuttle.

6) Robots do not stop working when humans arrive. In fact, they could be designed to also be used as human operated machinery to do far more complex tasks like building runways and constructing surface habitats that extend out from the tunnel system. Eventually the underground tunnel system could be enlarged enough to sustain a permanent colony.

The robots have to be designed with several things in mind. First is "task simplicity", limiting the robots as to what they can do--which goes against the grain at NASA.

Second is to seal components instead of lubricating them. To keep to a bare minimum parts exposed to extremes of temperature and dust.

Third will most likely be a repair robot for parts that need predictable replacement, like rock drilling bits. This robot stays on the grounded spaceship most of the time, just exiting periodically to work then return. Since this would be the most complicated robot, it would be most sensitive.

The entire robotic team can be "trained" on Earth ahead of time, performing its tasks in all sorts of situations, so that when it arrives on Mars, it can be programmed for the most likely scenario of operations.

Since the US is planning unmanned rockets with a 100 ton lift capability in the near future, the logical process would be:

1) Construct a large "shuttle" rocketship in space, then haul up enough fuel for it to make a round trip to Mars.

2) Send up modular pieces of the Mars lander with the robots and nuclear reactor inside. In orbit, they are fixed together, then attached to the shuttle rocketship for the transit. They only need enough fuel to land.

3) Transit to Mars ends in Martian orbit, where the shuttle and the lander separate. The shuttle stays in orbit for a while as a high-power transponder with Earth. The lander lands next to a large vertical rock outcropping selected as suitable for a horizontal tunnel network.

4) Initially the nuclear reactor, the tunneling robot and the tailings robot/scoop bulldozer approach the rock face. The tunneling robot begins to grind away at the rock surface, catching and passing the tailings underneath it to the tailing robot behind it. When it is full, it backs away and dumps the tailing away from the entrance. When the tunneling or tailing robot need energy, the nuclear reactor approaches them with a high current male connector and recharges them.

5) At intervals, the tunneling robot drills verticle holes in the rock ceiling and inserts low-weight ceramic reinforcing rods to add extra stability to the rock. Periodically, the tunneling robot backs out of the tunnel so that its bits can be replaced by the repair robot.

6) After a significant amount of tunnel and a vertical cistern has been mined, a low pressure micro sealing agent is sprayed on the inside of the tunnel walls and ceiling. Reinforcing members are cannibalized from the lander, as are the pressure doors, and even "flooring" material.

7) With the creation of a first "habitat", these robots can move a suitable distance away and begin the process again on a different rock face. Other robots can then be activated on missions such as scouting for and mining water.

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