Now that Phoenix successfully landed at the northern plains, how about sending a spacecraft just like it to the sourthern plains? We know the design works and could get the science we never got from MPL in 1999.

Phoenix is getting the science we never got from MPL already. And the major reason Phoenix was able to fly at all, was that it had the '01 hardware ready to go.

Thanks for the quick reply! I just thought comparing the northern and southern plains would be interesting.

Oh - I'm sure it would - but having explored 'a' pole, attention (given the limited budget) should move elsewhere, and to taking the Phoenix results and extrapolating via orbital data.

Phoenix is also already an old spacecraft, and used the 2001 lander combined with a lot of 1998 backup parts. This much later, it would probably be cheaper to design a whole new lander than to try to reconstruct Phoenix.

How difficult do y'all think it would it be to strap a robotic arm/scoop and other analysis goodies onto a mobile MSL platform?

Sort of an MSL-Eddie Bauer edition. (Perhaps Eddie Baeur isn't the right name - maybe Mike Mulligan is a better analogy)

-Mike

Doesn't the current MSL have a scoop and analysis goodies?

Moreover, do you think that we will get an additional $2billion worth of science by repeating MSL's mission on another part of the planet?

Also, your polar MSL would have to be able to travel *fast* if you didn't want it encased in dry ice after only a couple of hundred sols.

Seems a waste of an RTG-powered rover to land it somewhere that will render it immobile after only a few months.

-the other Doug

Seems a waste of an RTG-powered rover to land it somewhere that will render it immobile after only a few months.

I wonder how far a distance the heat of an RTG could 'ward off' deposition of frost.

I'm gonna say not much, Don. The heat of an RTG is, after all, what's used to generate electricity, so the system is designed to harness as much of that as it can. I'd guess that a couple of feet around them at most might be clear, but that's it.

On a side note, V2 probably got at least hip-deep in frost for at least one Martian winter and survived. I don't know if they tried to use the arm afterwards, but the cameras were apparently still able to move. Don't think that RTG heating helped any of this, though.

On a side note, V2 probably got at least hip-deep in frost for at least one Martian winter and survived.
As in ice up to the lander body? I have the impression there was but a thin coating deposited during the winter, hardly enough to visually modify rock and ground textures.

DOn

It's been a LONG time, but IIRC the Viking project people stated that the full depth of the frost might have been up to the lander's belly at some point. I might be wrong, of course. They only got back a few shots, which showed some minor frost deposits.

I doubt that stuff has much impact on the terrain anyhow. The working hypothesis for the V2 frost deposits was that they were 6:1 CO2/H2O clathrates, so sublimation is the only thing that happens after deposition. Might do something to the wind-borne dust layer, I guess, but hard to see what other effects it might have.

Doug.. sir, .... with all due respect, there are vast differences between the two poles. Look at the spiders and swiss cheese terrain.

I think the biggest problem with sending a south pole mission right now is we do not even know the right questions to seek answers to. We simply have NO experience with CO2 effects on minerals, etc., over geologic time scales. H2O we understand.... but not CO2, which is Mars other volatile.

I think we are all too earthcentric.

And landing at the south polar terrains means higher elevations and less air to slow us down... much more difficult I think than at the Phoenix latitude.

But I would truly love to trudge that southern terrain.... what a wonder that would be.

Craig

Do you mean that this place could be the most alien one in the whole Mars?

Yes, that was the gist of the comment.

I KNOW we understand CO2 mineralization on Earth... carbonates, etc. That is what we see on Earth, that is what we expected on Mars. But it is interesting that no major carbonate outcrops have been found. Clays and other signs of water reactions, but no large beds of carbonates.

Mars is its own place... and Earthy parallels only go so far.

The north polar terrain is similar to what is seen on Earth... polygons and trenches between. So the questions we can ask have some grounding in terrestrial experience.

The south pole is something else indeed.... I would love to see a lander or rover mission there. But I doubt that that is in the cards. At least for now.

Craig

However, in discussion of Martian carbonates, I will note that ALH 84001 contains nodules of carbonates. Indeed, the purported bacteria-like structures found in that rock are evident *only* within those carbonate nodules.

Carbonates were formed on Mars, if you believe the accepted theories on ALH 84001. But we have no indication that they were extensively deposited. Why they were not, or if they were why we can't see them, is still a matter of intense discussion.

-the other Doug

I dont doubt that for one second. But there isn't a Phoenix 2.0 ready to fly, there isn't cash to make one, and the science beacon in the form of H from the GRS is now 'covered' with Phoenix.

I'd love to land everywhere - but when you have one - just ONE lander left on the schedule, the south pole isn't the place, and I don't think it will be for some time to come.

Doug

-quote deleted. Mod.

I agree....with one lander to use, south pole is not the choice. Pity. But the South Pole is on my fantasy wish list for sure.

As for carbonates...we now know Mars had some surface water in it's early days. We know Mars has plenty of CO2. Was the water too acidic? Too sporadic? To me the fact that few carbonates have been found is far more interesting than if the standard Earth model had been true. That's how we learn.

Craig

It would be nice to see some new Discovery-class lander proposals get into the pipeline, though, and U of A is demonstrating that good missions can be managed by purely academic institutions. (JPL is an FFRDC, a Federally funded research & development corporation, IIRC, though managed at the top leve by Caltech.) I'd expect more Mars proposals to come from larger universities mostly because it's far more achievable in relatively short time-frames and budgets than pretty much any sort of outer-system mission.

If Phoenix uncovers some very interesting chemical results, it might not be too hard to sell a modest South Pole lander based on lessons learned & the desire to compare roughly climactically similar regions.