'Wrecking ball' could break the ice on Mars

[telfrow]

<i>A plan to drop a quarter-tonne copper ball through Mars's atmosphere and study the ejecta it blasts away from the planet's surface on impact is to be proposed to NASA. <br /><br />The mission, called THOR, would test models suggesting the planet's tilt – and therefore its climate – swings through extreme changes every 50,000 years.<br /><br />Robotic landers and rovers have previously visited the Red Planet's equatorial regions, and an upcoming mission called Phoenix is due to touch down near the north pole in 2008. But no probe has visited the planet's mid-latitudes, where gullies and glacier-like features suggest there may be large amounts of pure water ice beneath a layer of dusty soil.<br /><br />Now, researchers led by Phil Christensen at Arizona State University in Tempe, US, are proposing a mission to search for that ice directly. The idea behind THOR (Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources) is to fly an observer spacecraft to Mars and, hours before it reaches the planet, release an "impactor" ball. It could be up to 230 kilograms in mass and would be aimed at a region about 40° north or south of the equator.<br /><br />The impactor, likely to be a giant copper sphere, would crash to the surface at more than 4 kilometres per second, blasting a crater about 10 metres deep. Copper is not found on Mars in large quantities - unlike iron - so when observers see it in the ejecta, they will know its from the ball and not the soil. And it is also "heavy, dense, relatively inexpensive, and easy to work with", says Christensen. The observer spacecraft would record the impact from orbit, studying the composition of the ejected soil with spectrometers.</i><br /><br />Full Story<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[silylene old]

I will go a little simpler, with a lot less mass.... I would like to drop some bb-sized rock spheres from orbit into Meridiani dunes, and see if they generate microcraters. I bet they would burn up in the atmosphere. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[smashing_young_man]

If this idea had been proposed when Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the <i>Red Mars</i> series, I'm sure he would have thrown that in there as well. He used just about every proposed terraforming technique in his books up to that point.<br /><br />Though, really, this idea isn't too much different than towing an asteroid into an impact trajectory and allowing it to smash into the planet.

 

[telfrow]

Well, MGS runs out of propellant in about 2010, IIRC. Think we can keep one of the rovers running until then? <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

i think that is quite plausible, about the rovers. yes. <br /><br />i like this deep impact mars idea to the fullest extent of approval. mars has barely been explored, and much of it's surface is hiding perhaps <i>most</i> of the juiciest and tell-tale noachian and hesperian landmarks and surface features, buried beneath millions of cubic miles of sand, that we need to see. <br />if manifest destiny is go west young man on earth, it's go underground young man on mars <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />turning the ice and dirt slurry surface inside out is <i>essential</i> to our continued portraiture exactness of data aquisition. we need more than just one projectile. we need <i>hundreds</i> of them. <br /><br />let the dirt and ice fly, ladies and gentleman <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[bonzelite]

i don't think anyone knows. most of us pretty much agree they are impact related. but how exactly --that is a total unknown. are they from fragmented remains of a larger local event? what is somewhat frustrating is their apparent delicate appearance, almost too much so for some impact. unless the material was very lightweight. <br /><br />jury is way out on the microcraters.

 

[nexium]

Why not drop a 1/4 ton ball of depleted Uranium which is even rarer on the surface of Mars, not very costly and is even more dense than copper? Neil

 

[phaze]

let's just nuke mars and get it over with. teach those pesky martians a lesson!

 

[dragon04]

I think we should drop one on Cydonia and see if anybody down there gets mad. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />Seriously, though, it sounds like a cool idea. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[chew_on_this]

<font color="yellow">ONe recalls doing much the same on Ganymede and Titan in order to see what comes up, and being roundly criticized for it. </font><br /><br />The reasom your approach was deemed ill-conceived was the spacecraft was expected to "pick up the pieces" as it flew by. No lander(s). The Mars approach includes lander(s) for investigation. Big difference. Pretty tough to get much through Titans atmosphere let alone the logistics. Don't recall Ganymede entering that discussion.

 

[chew_on_this]

<font color="yellow">It was no more than the detection of dust and volatiles</font><br /><br />Still no atmosphere with deep impact. We have a hard enough time seeing through Titans' haze let alone trying to analyze minute particles. A lander to peruse the after effects would be ideal in both Mars and Titan scenarios. <br /><br /><font color="yellow">It's hardly revolutionary. </font><br /><br />Plus, I would have to say yes, it is revolutionary, seeings we've only done it once (not including spacecraft crashing into objects)!

 

[yevaud]

Colonel Sweeto <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

that's pretty warped, that cartoon! very sick <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />

 

[chew_on_this]

*lost*