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Russia to Explore the Mystery of the Mars Moon Phobos
| Phobos |
dailygalaxy.com
Russian scientists will focus on Moon and Mars exploration and repeat the Phobos-Grunt mission in the next decade, Space Research Institute Director Lev Zeleny said on Saturday. “The Moon and Mars are our priority for 2016-2025,” he said at the 40th COSPAR Scientific Assembly underway in Moscow on August 2-10.
The Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) in partnership with the European Space Agency will be carrying out two stages of the ExoMars mission in 2016 and 2018. In 2016, Roscosmos is planning to join Europe and Japan in the BepiColombo project. In 2017, it will orbit the Spektr-RG telescope and send a Russian rover, Luna-Globe, to the Moon in 2019, for the first time in years. An UV observatory is to be launched in 2020; an orbiting module and a dropship are scheduled to be sent to the Moon in 2012 and 2023, respectively.
After thoroughly testing lunar and Martian technologies, approximately in 2024, Russia, may repeat its Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars’ satellite Phobos to collect its soil and bring it back to Earth. The first Phobos-Grunt probe launched successfully in 2011, but then failed to fire the engine to put it on the correct path to the Red Planet, that if adjusted would reach Mars in late 2012. Russian space agency officials first announced that the craft was stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers had three days to correct the fault before the probe’s batteries run out. The venture was also carrying China’s first Mars satellite. Yinghuo-1 is riding piggyback on Phobos-Grunt.
Scientists had hoped the dusty debris would provide fresh insights into the origin of the 27km-wide moon, which many scientists suspect may actually be a captured asteroid. The total mass for the mission with all its fuel is more than 13 tons. That makes the venture the biggest Solar System expedition ever, a title previously held by the six-tonne Cassini-Huygens craft launched to Saturn in 1997.
The origin of Mars’ moon, Phobos (fear in ancient Greek), is a mystery, but three theories are considered plausible. The first is that the moon is a captured asteroid; the second is that it formed in-situ as Mars formed below it, and the third is that Phobos formed later than Mars, from debris flung into martian orbit when a massive meteorite struck the Red Planet. A fourth, far more radical and controversial theory is one that has been kicking around for decades: that Phobos is a artificial object in Mars orbit -in short, a 1.5-mile-long, extremely ancient spacecraft.
In a recent development, scientists say they have uncovered firm evidence that Mars’s largest moon, the mysterious Phobos, is made from rocks blasted off the Martian surface in a catastrophic event, solving a long-standing puzzle. It has been suggested that both Phobos and Deimos could be asteroids that formed in the main asteroid belt and were then “captured” by Mars’s gravity. An alternative theory suggests that Phobos could have been formed from the remnants of an earlier moon destroyed by Mars’s gravitational forces. However, this moon might itself have originated from material thrown into orbit from the Martian surface.
Previous observations of Phobos at visible and near-infrared wavelengths have been interpreted to suggest the possible presence of carbonaceous chondrites, found in meteorites that have crashed to Earth. This carbon-rich, rocky material, left over from the formation of the Solar System, is thought to originate in asteroids from the so-called “main belt” between Mars and Jupiter.
Data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft appears to make the asteroid capture scenario look less likely. Recent observations as thermal infrared wavelengths using the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) instrument on Mars Express show a poor match between the rocks on Phobos and any class of chondritic meteorite known from Earth, which seems to support the “re-accretion” models for the formation of Phobos, in which rocks from the surface of the Red Planet are blasted into Martian orbit to later clump and form Phobos.
“We detected for the first time a type of mineral called phyllosilicates on the surface of Phobos, particularly in the areas northeast of Stickney, its largest impact crater,” said co-author Dr Marco Giuranna, from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome.These phyllosilicate rocks are thought to form in the presence of water, and have been found previously on Mars.
“This is very intriguing as it implies the interaction of silicate materials with liquid water on the parent body prior to incorporation into Phobos,” said Dr Giuranna. “Alternatively, phyllosilicates may have formed in situ, but this would mean that Phobos required sufficient internal heating to enable liquid water to remain stable.”
Other observations from Phobos appear to match the types of minerals identified on the surface of Mars. Thus, the make-up of Phobos appears more closely related to Mars than to asteroids from the main belt, say the researchers. In addition, said Pascal Rosenblatt of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, “the asteroid capture scenarios also have difficulties in explaining the current near-circular and near-equatorial orbit of both Martian moons (Phobos and Deimos)”.
The researchers also used Mars Express to obtain the most precise measurement yet of Phobos’ density.”This number is significantly lower than the density of meteoritic material associated with asteroids. It implies a sponge-like structure with voids making up 25%-45% in Phobos’s interior,” said Dr Rosenblatt. A highly porous asteroid would have probably not survived if captured by Mars. Alternatively, such a highly porous structure on Phobos could have resulted from the re-accretion of rocky blocks in Mars’ orbit.
In describing the internal geometric structure of this “moon” as revealed by MARSIS, European Space Agency (ESA) sources emphasized that “several of these interior Phobos compartments also appear to still be holding some kind of atmosphere ….” which has given birth to wild speculation that Phobos could prove to be an artificial satellite of some sort.
The source repeated this several times … raising all kinds of fascinating questions regarding “how” the radar could, in fact, determine this — that some of the vast “rooms” inside Phobos (“from a quarter to half-a-mile in diameter …”) were “maintaining an internal pressure.”
Russia is planning a manned mission to the Moon in 2030-2031, Roscosmos First Deputy Head Alexander Ivanov said in July.
“In our programme this [manned mission to the Moon] is scheduled for 2020-2031. This programme [Federal Space Programme for 2016-2025] is being coordinated now,” he said.
When asked when the first settlement might be built on the Moon, Ivanov said this question was much more complex and needed additional attention.
Source: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org/2014/08/russia-to-explore-mystery-of-mars-moon.html
