Looking at the instrument fit of the new Mars Trace Gas Orbiter - and in particular at MATMOS - I can't but notice a similarity to the MARVEL mission proposed back in 2002. There's precious little available about MARVEL online, but this description covers it quickly:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_219.cfm

MARVEL would have taken an occultation FTIR much like MATMOS along with a limb photography camera to spot dust. It also would have brought along a submillimeter spectrometer.

So here's the question I ask (discuss away...):

Given the recent popularity of Martian methane, was it a mistake not to fly MARVEL? How much further along would we be if it had flown in 2007 with an instrument suite that included an instrument so similar to the TGO's flagship tool? And does anyone have any more information about this mission?

Cheers,

--Nick

Definitive methane wasn't a reality until the beginning of '09. PHX was selected over MARVEL, ARES and SCIM in late '03

If you want to apply hindsight- then you can't call it a mistake.

PHX was the right selection at the time given the MODY results.

We will have MAVEN between now and MTGO to start the building of our understanding.

Interesting recent paper on this:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/4wh5fpe

The abstract's free. The responses should be interesting, too.

I wasn't meaning this as a troll -- to stir the pot about the decisions made ten years ago or so!

Rather, I guess I was playing an imagination game - if we HAD launched MARVEL back a few years ago, what would we know?

Can anyone add any details on the capabilities of that mission and its instrument complement, such as how similar the occultation instrument would have been to MATMOS?

Cheers,

--N

Well - if we knew that, then we wouldn't have needed to launch MARVEL anyway

The current MATMOS does not differ dramatically from that proposed in the Mars Scout Program (don't have details at my finger tips, sorry). As an aside, to label the current state of a methane detection on Mars as "definitive" is an overstatement. Its status is probably more accurately described using words such as "reported" and "controversial"...