http://www.focusmag.co.uk/newsread.asp?ID=27060
PROBE PLANNED FOR PHOBOS 09:20:34 13/02/2007 'Practice run for Mars sampling mission announced A British team is working on a concept mission to land a spacecraft on Marss small moon, Phobos, take samples from its surface and bring them back to Earth. Scientists from the Open University and British satellite manufacturer Astrium are involved. The plan is for a mothership to orbit Mars before it releases a smaller probe onto the surface of Phobos, where it will drill or scoop and sample surface material. Then it will use chemical thrusters to lift off from the surface of the moon and dock onto the mothership, where it will be automatically packaged into a protective sealed container and flown near to Earth. It will be jettisoned from the mothership to Earth in a hard landing. The mission will last three years and is planned for 2016. Although technologically complex in its own right, the probes visit to the moon is being treated as a practice run for a joint UK/US mission planned for within the next 15-20 years, to sample rocks from Mars itself. The main difficulty is getting the sampler on and off the planet. The team hopes hoping to hone necessary skills on the smaller Phobos before tackling the bigger, higher-gravity Mars. Its hoped the moon samples will themselves contain fragments of Martian soil that will have been flung up over the billions of years that meteorites have been striking Mars. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
