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Robots To Go Spelunking In Martian Caves?
astroengine writes "Scientists are beginning to sketch out plans for NASA's new Mars rover Curiosity to climb Mount Sharp, but future robots may have a more direct way to access the planet's history books. Recent discoveries of 'skylights' and lava tubes on the surface of Mars, as well as the moon, are sparking the development of robotic probes that can descend into caves and explore tunnels. 'Geology works in layers, so how many layers can you see? Well, we know there are sinkholes on Mars. Those sinkholes expose potentially hundreds of feet of layers, so if you could lower something down and examine those layers and explore a tunnel underneath, or anything of that sort, the science that can be done with that is just phenomenal,' Jason Derleth, senior technology analyst with NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, told Discovery News."
Pie in the sky, if budget slashers come into power in a couple months. Heck, they'll probably put Houston, Edwards and Cape Canaveral on the block - "Private industry can do it more better!"
Yuh.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Communications are going to be a major issue. Gets a lot harder to send a signal out when you have 20+ meters of solid rock overhead. And even if you go down a sink-hole with a direct line of sight upwards, you'd have to send the signal straight up. Only solution I can see would be a repeater at the surface, possibly with a physical cable going down. It's pretty challenging overall.
All that would be tremendously simplified if we just sent a manned mission. Then a person could just climb down with an actual rope. With reduced gravity, it'd be quite easy (they may even be able to simply jump down and back up again, depending on how deep the hole is.)
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I saw this earlier and this thought immediately came to mind: Why send probes on dangerous cave missions when a machine that bores holes and analyses the sample could be built instead?
That's effectively what we're in the middle of, but it still takes a lot of support to make these happen and one screw up on unit conversion and throw away one massive outlay and years of support. Sending a team of people there would certainly accelerate things, but who wants to give up a few years on Earth to go there and back? (Not that it wouldn't be an adventure!) It's a long time with your team and you'd better all be able to get along.
I like Curiosity and hope it learns a lot for us. Sometimes just driving around you can see a lot, as example, drive through the American Southwest, near Death Valley and consider the forces at play to build that landscape.
I do worry though that most of what we're going to find is sand, more layers of sand underneath and then some sandstone under that, followed by yet more sandstone, all pushed around by Mars' winds for millions of years.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Are helicopters even reasonable in the thin Martian atmosphere? I assume it would still be possible, but the rotors would have to spin way faster and require much more energy.
To my mind, what would be more interesting would be a mission to one of the deeper canyons in Valles Marineris, where atmospheric pressure will be considerably higher, and where, perhaps, some layers may in fact be exposed. Lava tubes on Mars are likely to be as informative as lava tubes on Earth; in other words not so much from learning geological history per se.
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Unfortunately, helicopters(or even fixed-wing aircraft) are likely to be substantially harder on Mars.
The lower gravity is a nice bonus; but there is practically nothing to fly in. One 'standard' atmosphere on earth is a trifle over 100,000Pa. On Mars, just over 1200Pa is about the highest pressure known, with lows below 100Pa.
There are probably parts of Mars where a suitably designed atmospheric aircraft could operate, given that the gravity is a good deal lower and there is some atmosphere to work with; but it would be severely constrained compared to what you can do on earth.
"That's no cave"
The caves are 10 meters or more deep...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Wouldn't an inflatable type air craft be perfect for that scenario?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Exactly the opposite. The denser the air the more mass you displace with your balloon.
Very large caves...cavernous spaces. The radiation from Solar flares, Cosmic Rays, etc. means humans need a lot of shielding and that really only comes from a lot of mass between you and the vacuum. If we live on mars, moon or somewhere else, it will have to mean living underground. Earth has a magnetic field and an atmosphere that traps, deflects and degrades most high energy particles (==radiation) before they get to the ground. Other problems solved by caverns include: The moon and Mars change temperature 100C or more between day and night. Micrometeors that make a nice glow as trails at night on Earth act as a 30,000 kph BB gun on the moon. Living outside is very bad for your health.
I really want to see what a 100 meter wide, kilometer long cavern looks like from inside. The roof is 100 meters or more thick and has survived for billions of years. It should not be too hard to seal and pressurize it. The first images from a camera lowered into such a huge cavern, with the right lighting. will be stunning and will change the way we view living in space.
I was thinking along the same lines, what a perfect habitat! You could always build observation towers that extended up beyond the caves to get your fix of looking out the window.
I only hope that in the next few decades we do see a manned mission, although I suspect the effort will be private rather than funded by a government.
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Not really. Considering that the Martian atmosphere is something like 0.5% of the thickness of earth's, while the gravity is only lower by a little over 60%, it would take so much energy that it's really not possible with our current energy budget for spacecraft.
However, blimps or even zeppelins would be damn near ideal because of low gravity. Simpler and cheaper, too.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Nah, he/she/it must know where all the Martians are hiding - in the lava tubes.
Ignore his/her/its attempts to mislead our might Earthly robotic investigators!
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I saw this earlier and this thought immediately came to mind: Why send probes on dangerous cave missions when a machine that bores holes and analyses the sample could be built instead?
Exactly.
Further, lava tubes, oddly enough, are lined with lava. Not that informative.
A German designed drill is scheduled for the next lander in 2016 and drill 16 feet into the surface. Nothing you can put in a cave will be able come close to that, and at best it might be able to drill a few inches into solid lava.
The hole named "Jeanne" here is more than 178 meters deep, no way a drill can come close to that. And many of the holes detected on Mars are not lava tubes but sink holes, i.e. created by some process of erosion. This is often involves water, and "follow the water" is exactly what Mars exploration wants to do. We are much more likely to find interesting water-related geology and chemistry hundreds of meters down a water-erosion tunnel than a few meters down under the surface.
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