Mars Express - 'divining rod' mission delayed

[flynn]

Newscientist story<br /><br /><b>Mars Express 'divining rod' mission delayed </b><br /> <br />18:33 08 October 04 <br /> <br /><i>NewScientist.com news service </i><br /> <br />A spindly radar antenna - which could discover underground water on Mars - will now not deploy on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft until at least March 2005, say mission scientists. <br /><br />That represents about a year's delay for the experiment, which has been postponed repeatedly over concerns that the 40-metre-long antenna could smack into the spacecraft on deployment.<br /><br />The main antenna for MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) consists of wires strung inside two 20-metre-long fibreglass tubes the width of a shower rail. It will act as a divining rod, scouting for water as deep as several kilometres below ground.<br /><br />The folded tubes had been scheduled to pop out of opposite ends of a storage box on the side of the orbiter in April 2004. This was postponed after computer simulations of a similar antenna called Sharad - due to be launched to Mars on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in August 2005 - suggested the cold temperatures of space could boost the springiness of the antennae. This could make the segments swing out and snap backwards - hitting the craft or wrapping around crucial components.<br /><br /><b>Impact probability </b><br /><br />Until recently, scientists hoped MARSIS would deploy in late November. But European Space Agency (ESA) officials have now postponed this until March at the earliest after meeting with NASA, which is managing the project, on 5 October.<br /><br />"In order for us to say this is benign, or there's a particular probability of impact, we have to do more analyses," says MARSIS manager William Johnson, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. <br /><br />Scientists at NASA and at the antenna's manufacturer, Astro Aerospace of Carpinteria, California, expect to finish physical tests of <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[giofx]

damn, let's hope they figure out how to get it deployed safely soon... btw, i'm looking forward to see what this fantastic radar can achieve! They are right to wait until all possible issue are investigated.

 

[centsworth_II]

I don't mind waiting. They are getting such good data from the other instuments that I would hate to see that jeopardized. But I do look forward to what the Marsis will find. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>