----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary McMurtry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 10:56 AM Subject: Re: How to combine the Europa Orbiter and Lander > > Bruce, > > Pardon my ignorance. Beyond shock resistance, these penetrator > probes seem to obey KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) which is always a > good thing, at least in oceanography. Can you please inform us about > the Earth analogs that have been working? Also, any information on > the Japanese Lunar-A and Russian Mars penetrator probes would be most > welcomed. Data on penetrators on the Web isn't as frequent as one might wish, but Andrew J. Ball has a great website that serves as a central source on the subject: http://ifp.uni-muenster.de/~balla/penetrometry , with pointers to many other articles. The document I read years ago on the ground tests in New Mexico is "Surface Penetrators for Planetary Exploration" (J.P. Murphy et al, Ames Research Center, 1981). It's NASA Technical Memorandum 81251, published by the National Technical Information Service as N81-21000. The Nov/Dec. 1998 issue of "Planetary and Space Sciences" (Vol. 46, No. 11-12) had a detailed article on the Russian Mars 96 penetrators -- although you can't access that magazine on the Web anymore without a subscription. Fairly good introductory descriptions can be found at www.msss.com/mars/mars9x/penetrators.html and http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/MARS96D.html . The "Volume 35 Supplement" issue of Acta Astronautica on "Low-Cost Planetary Exploration" has a detailed article on the Japanese Lunar-A penetrators -- but there's also a very good description on the Lunar-A official website at www.isas.ac.jp/e/enterp/missions/lunar-a/mission.html , a good one at http://solarsystem.estec.esa.nl/~dheather/download/abstracts/Mizutani_et_al. pdf , and a surprisingly detailed article ("Japanese Moon Missions Move Toward Launch") in the Dec. 7, 1998 Aviation Week. Now I gotta go check to see if I got all those damn USLs right. == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
