Mars Express to Deploy 'Divining Rod'

[zavvy]

<b>Mars Express to Deploy 'Divining Rod' </b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />A "divining rod" to search for underground water on Mars will be deployed on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft early this spring, after a year of delays. The new deployment date for the radar antenna - to be announced within days - is likely to fall in April 2005.<br /><br />Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding - or MARSIS - consists of wires strung inside three long fibreglass tubes. These will seek water - which might provide oases for life - as deep as several kilometres below the Martian surface.<br /><br />The tubes, currently folded and stored onboard Mars Express, were originally scheduled for deployment in April 2004. But mission managers postponed the date when computer simulations showed that a similar antenna planned for launch later in 2005 could swing back and damage the spacecraft upon deployment. So the MARSIS team spent several months last autumn running vacuum-chamber tests of the antenna material and modelling the deployment on computers.<br /><br />The research now reveals that there is indeed a "high likelihood" that one of the three tubes "will whip back and strike the spacecraft", says MARSIS manager William Johnson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. "But the antenna is quite light and flexible - about the diameter and strength of a toilet paper tube," he adds. "So the impact would most likely not cause any damage." <br /><br />Centre of gravity<br /><br />More worrisome than a direct hit is the small chance that a tube could get caught on the spacecraft or tangled up with itself. In that case, MARSIS would not work and could leave the spacecraft with a new and unanticipated centre of gravity, forcing mission managers to tweak how they control the probe. "There is some risk attached to this," Johnson told New Scientist.<br /><br />But officials at the European Sp

 

[toymaker]

Finally...I have been waiting so long for this... It will be interesting to see if there's some water under the areas where methane was detected...

 

[yurkin]

Good to hear they are going ahead with it.

 

[flynn]

Fingers crossed for successful deployment <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>

 

[teije]

I don't get it...<br />what exactly can cause the antenna to 'whip back' as they say? Where does this force come from?<br />And, if it does whip, then does it ever stop whipping?<br /><br />thx adv.<br />Teije

 

[CalliArcale]

Presumably from the mechanism that deploys it. They must be worried that it could act as a spring.<br /><br />My fingers are also crossed for successful deployment! MARSIS will explore Mars in ways that have never been done before. This is going to be fantastic. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[thechemist]

It's official now.<br /><br />Green light for deployment of ESA’s Mars Express radar<br /><br />8 February 2005<br />"The European Space Agency has given the green light for the MARSIS radar on board its Mars Express spacecraft <font color="orange">to be deployed during the first week of May.</font>Assuming that this operation is successful, the radar will finally start the search for subsurface water reservoirs and studies of the Martian ionosphere.................." <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>I feel better than James Brown.</em> </div>

 

[flynn]

I propose with holding all the Cydonia Marsis readings for a month just to send the SETI crowd nutz.<br /><br /> <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>