NASA Announces Next Mars Mission

Grant Henninger writes "Today, NASA announced their final selection for the Mars Scout 2013 mission: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. MAVEN will provide the first direct measurements ever taken to address key scientific questions about Mars's evolution by measuring characteristics of its atmospheric gases, upper atmosphere, solar wind, and ionosphere. The mission, estimated to cost $485M, is scheduled for launch in late 2013."

Comments

Re:That's what these missions are ultimately for

[moniker127]

I was thinking more along the lines of "How difficult is it to build condos"

What about digging too?

[houbou]

I mean, I may not know much about space exploration, although I find the topic fun and interesting, but as they are planning this mission, which in effect is the studying of Mars atmosphere and weather, why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone and study Mars' crust or at least, something more like a few hundred feet into the ground itself?

Whatever equipment they send, have a missile or something that can impact or dig into the soil, be launched from space directly onto Mars soil. The resulting hole that would be from could receive the visit from a drone, who could take samples and make various analyses. After all, the surface soil samples they've been doing, it's all nice and dandy, but the real story, I believe should be what's underneath it all.

That way, they get data from the air and they get a sample of what Mars is made of down below. We may end up finding more resources available to help with towards a real man space exploration, as there may be resources awaiting to be utilized.

Depending on cost, etc.., they may even be able to have key locations targetted for drilling and just have a drone in each location dropped.

Gives a better perspective, might see some variations in what is found, depending on location..

Re:What about digging too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Privatization is not a full proof thing. Nothing is.

However, the U.S. banks are still some of the strongest in the world, and they are doing much better than the nationalized banks in South/Central America.

Re:What about digging too?

[Kjella]

Well, an impact doesn't get you very far. Even the best bunker-buster bombs do only 20 feet of reinforced concrete, not sure how far they'd get in Mars soil but probably not that much further if it's mountains and they're not designed to expel things to the surface. Oh yeah and it'd weigh 4-5000 pounds. As you'd have to wait for a drone to get nearby (we're not that accurate and the drones not that fast) you'll probably get as much out of studying "new" meteor craters, if you only have a brush to take away any residue collected on the surface.

What would be interesting is a drilling operation, but getting a drilling rig that could reach any real depths down there wouldn't exactly be an add-on task. One thing is the drill itself but in general a drilling rig requires some sort of cooling fluid and large amounts of power, both are very rare on Mars. The Rovers actually consume very little power, I don't remember the figure but it's not much. Just making a solar panel farm to power any sort of drilling would probably be an entire mission all by itself.

However, just like oil companies we wouldn't want to drill where there's nothing interesting, so the real answer is probably reflection seismology. Drop a bunch of cheap redundant geophones, make the impact, record all the seismic data through some local wireless grid and send it to a C&C central that'll broadcast it back to earth. It shouldn't be that hard to make a "Mars Glider" instead of lander that'll drop the sensors and the impact can be pretty much anything. If it takes out some of the geophones that's acceptable too.

Re:What about digging too?

[Raenex]

So many assertions, all based on people's political philosophy and not on data!

So you follow that by spewing your own political philosophy without data as universal truth? The funny thing is the post you replied to was talking about data.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is going to get even less funding for mentioning evolution in their latest project on principle. More money for other on ground areas I suppose.

Just curious, does NASA provide all documents online relating to development of space ships and/or an area for discussion of such projects? It would be pretty interesting to read how much work and creativity goes on in NASA workers' lives.

Re:A challange to NASA

[FleaPlus]

Have us engineering students, engineers and insane rocket enthusiasts/investors design a mission to mars using live animals to test as many technologies as possible before you even think of sending a human mission. We US engineers are either bored building endless varieties of consumer crap or worrying what are we will be asked to build in a war with Russia and Iran. I vote C, a moused mission to mars. Think of the merchandising!

Actually, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, a collaboration between MIT and Georgia Tech, is working on something analogous to what you describe. They aren't planning on actually sending it to Mars though, just Earth orbit:

The Mars Gravity Biosatellite will carry a small population of mice to low Earth orbit aboard a spinning spacecraft creating "artificial gravity" equivalent to that on the Martian surface. The five-week mission will conduct the first in-depth study of how mammals adapt to a reduced-gravity environment. Groundbreaking data from this mission and its successors will be essential in determining future possibilities for human space exploration.

Re:Obligatory

[Jor]

They are looking for water, which - when the oil runs out - is going to be a lot more interesting.

Note: the vast majority of all fresh water processing is fueled by fossile fuel today (think sea water processing), so when the oil runs out, there is going to be a serious shortage in drinking water.

I't wont even be the first war about water, but it may be the last one. Ever.