Re: Proposed sample return mission to Phobos

In article <45ce0574$0$16371$88260bb3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Guy Fawkes <spare_the_rod@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I would be very pleased to see both Phobos missions come to pass.

I, for one, wouldn't. It distracts from the real goal: landing a craft on
Mars and getting (part of) it back into orbit again, which would be a
prerequisite for landing humans on Mars.

So why is that "the real goal"? Please explain. No, it's not self-evident
that flags and footprints on Mars trump all other goals in space.

There's very little usefull science
to be gotten from Phobos (and Deimos) as they're merely two big captured
astroids.

Actually, nobody knows that for sure -- their origin is a bit of a
mystery, and that's only the leading theory. (The main difficulty with
that one is that it's not clear how a pair of captured asteroids end up in
low orbits that are almost perfectly circular and equatorial.)

There is also some possibility that there are ancient Mars rocks -- older
than anything now easily findable on Mars -- on their surfaces.

And there is a strong possibility that they have significant water
content, in which case their resources might be quite important to future
transportation to and from Mars. (And elsewhere -- in energy terms, they
are closer to Earth orbit than the surface of the Moon is.) Of course,
that's not relevant to a flags-and-footprints Mars mission... if that's
all you care about.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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