Mars-Express On Its Way

Nebukadnezar writes "Two weeks ago, Mars-Express tested its sensors and took some marvelous data and pics of the Earth-Moon system from a distance of about 8*10^6 km. Nice to see our neighborhood once in a while. BTW check out the spectrometer readings of Earth: water shows up very clearly. I wonder what this instrument will tell us about water on Mars..."

Comments

It's nice...

[Zeriel]

With all this crap about the shuttle program and interference with commercial spaceflight, it's always refreshing to see new exploratory spaceflights.

Questions For the Sake of Questions

[swdunlop]

.. wonder what this instrument will tell us about water on Mars. ..

Hm. It's ice, it's wet when it melts, and it's mostly concentrated in the poles. Was this trip really necessary?

Re:Questions For the Sake of Questions

[swdunlop]

I probably should have been less curt with this posting, so I shall accept being branded as troll, this time. But, the question remains: how much useful knowledge are we going to recoup with this mission, in comparison to earlier missions? This particular voyage appears to be an effort by NASA to recover lost face from the failed Mars missions in the past few years. As I get older, I have started to have less faith in NASA's policies that exploration justifies itself.

Re:Questions For the Sake of Questions

[TotalTossa]

Mars express is an ESA mission by the way.
There are two twin NASA probes ('Opportunity' and 'Spirit') following on behind it. And a Japanese craft a bit behind that.

Re:Questions For the Sake of Questions

[corleth]

Ditto about it being an ESA rather than NASA mission.

However, in answer to your question, this is far from being a mission for the sake of being a mission. Some of the instruments are novel (e.g. the Fourier Spectrometer and the long-wave ground-penetrating radar) and so will produce novel data. MARSIS, in particular, will be used to search for sub-surface ice in a completely new way, which should allow the global distribution to be mapped. In addition, instruments such as the high-resolution stereo camera (HRSC) will simply produce better quality and coverage, higher resolution data than ever before, allowing much more detailed studies than ever before.

-Karl

Re:Questions For the Sake of Questions

[Hairy1]

After watching a recent program on the Apollo Project, I believe that the achievement of landing men on the moon was far greater than simply returning some rock samples. It was a statement about ourselves - that we can rise above our petty issues, and think about doing something that is historical.

Some argue we should not shoot for Mars until we solve our problems here. The thing is we will never solve the problems of hunger, disease and poverty. If we wait until we have justice and world peace for all we will be waiting a long time.

When sojourner landed on mars it was great. It inspired me - that perhaps doing great things had not ended with Apollo. What the world needs is something positive, another grand journey. The US doesn't need to invade countries to show how powerfull it is - it could instead go to Mars - and perhaps continue its cooperation with other agencies.

This mars mission is simply another step towards going to mars to stay and live. Getting off the earth is the first step to becoming a spacefaring civilization.

Whoa!

[Josh Booth]

There's water on Earth?! When did that happen?

Seriously, it just feels good when something you put so much work and hope into just clicks. Besides, when you're on as long a trip as Mars Express is, you have to play with something until you get there.

Water on Mars. . .

[astrobabe]

This instrument won't tell us anything about water on Mars in the way in which you're thinking. The spectra of Earth is it's atmospheric spectra. We already know about the atmospheric spectra of Mars from ground based observations and other space missions and we know that the bulk of the water we infer to be there from surface geology is NOT trapped in the atmosphere. At this point in order to find water we need a better gamma ray spectrometer (not optical and IR), but current analysis shows that there isn't enough carbon dioxide on Mars to have caused what water ice there is now to melt.

Re:Water on Mars. . .

[corleth]

It's the long-wave radar MARSIS instrument that will be doing most of the search for water. Apparently it will be sensitive to the presence of ground-ice layers (i.e. crust where water-ice is present within the pores) at depths of upto a few km. Not only will we be able to detect water-ice, but we should also be able to quantify volumes to some extent.

Methane..

[Rudy Rodarte]

According to this chart, earth has enough methane to show up on this orbiters sensors. Ok /.ers, it's time to lay off the Taco Bell and Burrito King visits during lunch.

Re:Methane..

[kinnell]

You may be joking, but there is evidence to suggest that methane released by sheep and cow flatulence is a major cause of global warming.

Re:Methane..

[azav]

Termites and cows man. I'm not kidding. Those are the main producers last time I checked.

let's hope this one gets some good info

[ravenousbugblatter]

As always it's amazing to see new photos of earth from outerspace, especially in ones like this where you can see the moon in reference to the earth.

The next couple of years could be really interesting with all of the mars missions launched recently. Let's just hope they didn't screw up any metric conversions this time...

Re:let's hope this one gets some good info

[coryboehne]

You know the really amazing thing to me?? Simple minded blabber really but,,, considering that picture was taken july 3rd evening and there were plenty of fireworks going off everywhere in the US I wonder if that has any ability to skew the data appreciably? I also wonder if there have ever been any space based pictures of larger displays (think NY city) on july 4th? Like I said,, just mindless blabber...

unmanned/manned exploration

[Madcapjack]

Unmanned exploration is good because it brings good solid data. Manned exploration is good because we have opposable thumbs.

Re:unmanned/manned exploration

[Sanga]

Robots could be built with opposable thumbs too!

But I see your point, the flexibility is lost -- however sending many robotic explorations and getting little packets of data is a "manageable risk" situation rather than putting all the eggs in one (certainly fewer number than robotic probes) human venture would give us either zero or lot of results.

Re:unmanned/manned exploration

[Madcapjack]

But I see your point, the flexibility is lost -- however sending many robotic explorations and getting little packets of data is a "manageable risk" situation rather than putting all the eggs in one human venture would give us either zero or lot of results.

I mentioned opposable thumbs for a number of reasons. First of all, opposable thumbs are symbolic of our rather flexible capacity to manipulate objects and deal with contingency. I also wanted to hint at that, among other things, opposable thumbs are rare and they are the secret to our success. intelligence is not enough. dolphins will never build rockets, both because they physically can't do it, and because they are underwater. i was endorsing a colonization effort.

and trying to be funny. ( :

I entirely agree with you. And the cost of manned missions and the difficulty is demanding.

Ozone?

[kinnell]

According to the chart, the level of ozone is quite high. Does anyone know if this corresponds to the actual average ozone levels in the whole atmosphere, or is it skewed higher because the ozone layer is at high altitude?