Remember the story about the asteroid that is headed straight for Mars? Phil Plait, who writes the Bad Astronomy Blog, reports that the odds of the asteroid hitting Mars have actually improved…so now it’s only 96% unlikely to happen. He also pooh-poohs the suggestion that it’s not an asteroid at all but the long-lost Mars Observer space probe that disappeared just as it was about to enter Martian orbit several years ago. By calculating the asteroid’s path backward, he says, it’s easy to disprove that idea. Funny how science lets you figure things like that out without having to take it on faith, eh?
Wired reports that NASA is well-underway on designing the next-generation Martian lander intended for launch in 2009. As you can see at the top of this post, the new design is much larger (the Mini Cooper is shown in the picture as a comparative object — the rover is almost as big as the car) and more robust. The picture does not show the science package that will be incorporated into the final vehicle, but Wired says plans include the ability to vaporize soil samples for spectroscopy from up to 60 feet away and a tiny plutonium battery that would be used to keep the rover alive when the solar panels don’t recharge.
When it gets down to brass tacks, though, I doubt few of us will really be satisfied with all of this interest and exploration of Mars until we get some people “on the ground”. That day is still pretty far off, but the groundwork is being laid. This fantastic post from the Spanish blog Fogonazos has a ton of information about the “Mars Analogue Research Station” project , a joint venture between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, The SETI Institute, and the Mars Institute. They’ve built self-contained research stations in the Arctic, where terrain and climate conditions are most like what astronauts will encounter on Mars, and the crews try to simulate extra-terrestrial expedition conditions as much as possible.
