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

Overkill?

[redheaded_stepchild]

Couldn't we get more data by drilling cores like we do at the poles and other places around the world? Seems to me that all we would really succeed in doing is throwing the evidence in a million different directions. And have we built a rover that is capable of not getting stuck in a crater?