* Astronomy

A One-way Ticket to Mars

Going to Mars on a return journey obviously involves a high level of risk. It shortens your life expectancy. Where does the risk arise? Well, as we know from the two Shuttle disasters, takeoff and landing are the most vulnerable times. By eliminating half of these (laughter), you would extend your life expectancy. Radiation in space is also a serious factor for a Mars mission, and during the journey there and back youd be exposed twice, for many months each time, to cosmic rays in space. Its true Mars is also a high-radiation environment, but its easier to shield yourself once youre on Mars. The zero G during the journey is also bad news. Again, by cutting out half, your life expectancy increases.
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ESA and the Centre National dEtudes Spatiales (CNES) will be co-hosting, in cooperation with NASA and the International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG), an International Conference on 9 and 10 July in the Auditorium of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris* to discuss the next step in the exploration of Mars.
We are still collecting data under NASAs Phoenix, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Odyssey missions, as well as under ESAs Mars Express mission, as we prepare for even more exciting missions to come, notably NASAs Mars Science Laboratory and ESAs ExoMars. Mars exploration is continuing at a steady pace and future missions will integrate scientific payloads and technologies that will eventually serve the ultimate goal of carrying out a manned mission to Mars.

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NASA announced today that the next mission in the Mars Scout program, originally planned for launch in 2011, is now targeted for launch in 2013. The schedule slip is because of an organizational conflict of interest that was discovered in one of the mission proposal team's Phase A Concept Study. This was the shortest delay for the mission possible because opportunities to send spacecraft to Mars occur only once every 26 months.
NASA will fund current proposals to meet a new launch date in 2013. Revised proposals will be due in August 2008, and the evaluation and selection will take place in December 2008.
In November, NASA postponed the Scout mission's evaluation, selection, and announcement so the agency could resolve an organizational conflict of interest. The conflict of interest was discovered shortly after the concept study reports were received.
The extent of the conflict was severe enough that NASA determined its only recourse was to stop the evaluation and reconstitute the entire review panel that provides the technical and cost analyses for mission selections.

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Russia is planning two unmanned missions to Mars.
The first mission, scheduled for 2009, is to orbit Mars and land on the tiny moon Phobos, where a rover would roam for three years. There, it would collect samples of soil to bring back to Earth – the first ever if successful.
A second mission, is to place a lander on the surface of the Red Planet by 2015.
But missions to Mars have had little success. Since 1960, only three out of 17 Russian missions have been outstanding successes. The US has faired little better.
Russia’s last Martian mission was in 1996, when its Mars-96 orbiter failed to ignite its booster rocket.



The Martian missions, Phobos 1 and 2, in 1988 were also unsuccessful; one failed on the way because of a software error. The other made it into orbit around Mars but a computer glitch prevented it from deploying a lander to Phobos’ surface.
Russia has been working on a Phobos mission for several years.

In theory, it should be easier to land on the Martian moons because a probe would only have to move alongside another orbiting object, rather than decelerate rapidly through the planet’s atmosphere.



A sample return mission would also use less fuel escaping the tiny gravity of a moon compared to leaving the much larger planet.
A further advantage of landing on Phobos is that it is very close to Mars – just 9000 kilometres above the surface. From that vantage point, a spacecraft could also make detailed measurements of Mars.

The proximity of Mars means Phobos is likely to have pieces of the planet on it. When large meteorites crash into Mars, they kick up rocks and soil. The finest particles are launched into orbit around Mars, where Phobos sweeps some of them up.
But collecting grains of Martian dust from Phobos would not tell scientists a lot about where the particles originated or how old they are.

“You learn a lot more about Mars if you know where the rock came from” - Phil Christensen, geologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, US, who has worked on several of NASA’s Mars missions.
Meteorites found on Earth that originated on Mars suffer the same drawback. “But the bottom line is we don’t know a lot about Phobos either,” he adds.


Discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, using the US Naval Observatory’s 66cm refractor, in Washington DC. Phobos, the larger of the two moons, orbits the planet 7.65 hours at a distance of 9,350km (2.75 mars radii)
The period is much shorter than Mars rotation, so the satellite would appear to rise in the west and set in the east.

The US has never devoted a mission to Phobos or its sister moon Deimos although other Martian orbiters have snapped pictures of the pair. The moons do not have the obvious allure of Mars: interesting climate, a history of water and the prospect of life.

“Phobos and Deimos don’t have those attractions, but they’re attractive in their own right. Once you decide to do a proper manned missions, you should think about Phobos and Deimos.” - Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project in Virginia, US.

Singer says setting up a crewed base on Deimos would be cheaper and easier than sending humans to the Martian surface.
A mission devoted to the moons could explain how the satellites are held together – whether they are piles of rubble loosely held together by gravity or solid chunks.
Phobos is remarkable in that it orbits Mars three times a day.
The satellite is in a synchronous rotation (so that the same faces are always turned towards MARS).

Phobos has a very low density close to 2000 kg per cubic meter.
Most scientists assume the heavily cratered moons are captured asteroids. But it is actually quite hard for a planet to capture an object into its orbit - most things just skim by.
“So how it got there is a bit of an enigma” - Phil Christensen.

-- Edited by Blobrana at 20:01, 2005-06-24