Plan To Bomb Mars For Signs of Climate Change

Oliver Harris writes "Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars in the hope that they will reveal signs of climate change. Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?" From the article: "'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."

Comments

Re:Overkill?

[Kelson]

Sure, but drilling cores is something that needs a lot of equipment and hands-on control. It'd be great for a manned mission, but it's tricky to fit a hundred-foot-plus telescoping drill onto a rover and expect it to work.

This way you can blast a crater and then analyze the dust spectroscopically.

Re:Alternatively,

[VendettaMF]

Or, we could be observant and wait for a meteor impact.

Which leaves the techs of NASA looking at two ionised molecules of random gas and wonderring which was a bit of Mars and which was a bit of random meteor...

A nice homogenous impactor is essential for this form of research.