The 10th Anniversary of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 18
An anonymous reader writes: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is celebrating 10 years of service in its mission to study Mars from orbit. Recently it has discovered an ancient lake that might hold the best possible chance of finding life on the Red Planet. "MRO has discovered that Mars' south polar cap holds enough buried carbon-dioxide ice to double the planet's current atmosphere if it warmed. It's caught avalanches and dust storms in action. The spacecraft's longevity has made it possible to study seasonal and longer-term changes over four Martian years," Rich Zurek from Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
I wouldn't want to find life! (Score:1)
Not unless I have a blaster... I'm not playing the victim in that movie!
enough buried CO2 ice to double the ... atmosphere (Score:1)
Ooooo, gotta love scientists (or "science" writers) lying with statistics!
(Mars' atmospheric pressure is currently 6/10 of 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure.)
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How is it lying? I don't find anything the least bit misleading there. You may be reading some comparison with Earth's atmosphere into it, but I don't see that at all.
Everybody knows Mars' atmosphere is very thin, that's why you'd want to thicken it in the first place. Everybody also knows that while thin, there is a meaningful atmosphere, enough to make aerobraking and parachutes useful when arriving at Mars, for example. Doubling that would be a very significant change, hence it's worth mentioning.
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It still might have been simpler to say "there is as much CO2 locked up in buried deposits as there is in the entire atmosphere". It wouldn't be any less (or more) misleading, but it would be somewhat easier to grasp.
Almost 20 years of continual presence on Mars (Score:5, Interesting)
Humanity has now had almost 20 years of continual presence on Mars either in orbit or on Mars. The Mars Global Surveyor reached Orbit of Mars in September of 1997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Global_Surveyor [wikipedia.org] and remained active through 2006. Because of Mars Express, Opportunity and MRO for most of that time period we've actually had multiple Martian probes active during almost all of the last 15 years. Since the arrival of Curiosity as well as MAVEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVEN [wikipedia.org] and the Mars Orbiter Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission [wikipedia.org] it is likely that we will have probes on Mars through when humans first arrive.
It is also worth emphasizing that this work is not mere exploration but has serious and substantial concerns. We need to find out how common life is. It is an important part of understanding if we need to be concerned about a Great Filter or not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter [wikipedia.org]. Is the solution to the Fermi paradox that life is rare, or that complex life is rare? Is it something else? Or is something that civilizations do which drastically curtails their own lifespans? In that regard, exploration of the solar system is vitally important to the future of our civilization. And this is even before we discuss the fact that the more we understand about Mars the easier colonization will be.
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Mars Life (Score:1)
I think there could be areas of deep snow pack, with some covering warmer geological regions so that there would be lakes under thick snow domes. Similar to the lakes under the snow / ice in Antarctica.
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Thanks for the laugh.
Let's send another one. (Score:5, Insightful)
We should send backup.
First, orbiter missions are necessarily safer than lander missions and have longer lifespans. They also get less detail but what they lack in depth, they gain in breadth. Granted, a second orbiter won't add that much in breadth right now, but there are several considerations arguing for sending one anyhow.
1. It is a communications relay to Earth. This is probably sufficient justification by itself. Things happen to spacecraft, even when they're in Earth orbit, and it takes at least 18 months to send a replacement to Mars (and usually quite a bit more). We don't want to be blacked out or in intermittent contact with our surface craft for 18 months. The value of the missions on the planet justifies having redundancy above the planet.
2. Stereo imaging. When something happens on the surface, we can get two angles on it at the same time, or at nearly the same time.
3. Mission expansion. Right now, MRO has to point back at us at least part of the time to transmit at high speed. This can pull it out of position for doing science. The amount of time spent blind would be greatly reduced if there were two eyes in the sky rather than one, and it might be practical to do more orbit-changing burns, even knowing they shorten the useful life of the MRO, because its replacement is already in place. Despite the "shit happens" factor, most spacecraft don't just up and die. They run out of propellant to maintain themselves, and then have to be disposed of so as not to become navigational hazards.
4. New technology. Sensors have only gotten better, and I'm sure there were compromises made in selecting the hardware for MRO that are biting mission controllers in the ass. Those could be fixed.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but these seem quite sufficient to me.
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The MAVEN orbiter also serves as a communications relay. As a matter of fact, getting it to Mars to take over communications was deemed so important the launch was allowed to proceed during the last government shutdown [slashdot.org].
Of course, when MRO finally kicks the bucket, the U.S. program will be down to just MAVEN for communications. So we should, as you say, have another orbiter ready to take over for continuity's
NASA's ISS is in a pool; where's the Mars rover? (Score:2)