Science Goal
The overall science
goal of the mission is to understand the possibilities for past or present life
by conducting a thorough search for liquid water, which is necessary to life
as we know it. While liquid water cannot last long on the surface of Mars,
some water might be trapped underground where the increase in pressure
and temperature could be sufficient to keep it liquid. U.S. scientists will be
working with their European colleagues to assess these possibilities.
Science Objectives
The scientific objectives
of the Mars Express mission also attempt to fulfill some of the lost scientific
goals of the failed Russian Mars-96 mission. These objectives support the
search for water by understanding what geological structures and minerals
on Mars might have been formed by water, the extent of subsurface water,
and what the atmosphere can tell us about the martian climate and how
much water might have been lost to space in the past.
Objectives include: global surveys of the topography of the martian
surface at 10-meter resolution, mineralogical mapping at 100-meter
resolution, characterization of the subsurface to several kilometers depth,
and analyses of atmospheric circulation, surface-atmospheric interactions,
and interactions between the martian atmosphere and the space environment.
U.S. Participation
In partnership with
their European colleagues, U.S. scientists are participating in the scientific
instrument teams of the Mars Express mission. [More about U.S. participants
on the Mission Team and Mars Express' science instruments]
A great deal of U.S. science participation will be focused on the scientific
objectives of the MARSIS instrument, which is an orbital low-frequency
sounding radar that provides echo profiles of the subsurface of Mars to
several kilometers depth. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been
instrumental in providing radio frequency sub-systems and the sounder
antenna. The specific science objectives for MARSIS are:
- to detect, map,
and characterize subsurface material discontinuities in the upper crust
of Mars, including liquid water-bearing zones, icy layers, and other
geologic units and structures
- to characterize
and map the elevation, roughness, and electromagnetic properties of
the surface and
- to probe the
ionosphere of Mars to characterize the interaction of the atmosphere
and the solar wind.
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