Transcript The ideas submitted by the WROONA group at this workshop

Research in the WROONA Group
Daniel Mège
+ one or two unrealistic ideas for future instrumental development
FNP project TEAM 2011/7-9
October 2011 - June 2015
Mars helps understand the Earth
Earth helps understand Mars
Wroona is a small blue world in
Wroona system, located on the far edge
of the Inner Rim in the Rayter Sector.
The planet's continents are separated
by vast oceans, and their blue-sand
beaches stretch for thousands of
kilometers. The near-human
inhabitants of Wroona, numbering over
seven billion, are a blue-skinned species
with a lighthearted and optimistic
outlook on life.
StarWars wiki
© John C. Holden
Present collaborations
Research topics
Comparative geoscience
Mars
vs.
Afar
Similar processes
Landslides
Socompa
Peru
Collapse of topographic ridges
Valles Marineris
Rock alteration
Gale crater
SE Ethiopia
Valles Marineris
Tatra Mountains
Slovakia
Research team
• 4 PhD students
• 2 postdocs (adiunkt)
• 1 PhD student
• 1 adiunkt (zastępca kierownika)
• 1 professor
• 1 kierownik
Science topics
• Evolution of paleoenvironments
• Cold environments
• Mass wasting processes
Datasets used
Spacecraft
Instrument
Data type
Basic usage
Resolution /pixel
Mars Global Surveyor
MOC
MOLA
MAG-ER
HRSC
OMEGA
MaRS
THEMIS
Panchromatic imagery
Laser altimetry shots
Magnetic field measurements
Stereoscopic imagery
Hyperspectral cubes
Orbital tracking
Day-time imagery
Night-time IR imagery
Panchromatic imagery
Panchromatic imagery
Hyperspectral cubes
Sounding radar
Various
morphology
topography, gravity maps
magnetic maps
morphology, topography
mineralogy
gravity anomaly maps
morphology
surface thermal properties
morphology, topography
morphology, topography
mineralogy
subsurface structure
geological comparison between
Gale crater and Wroona Group
study areas
6 m min
variable
Mars Express
Mars Odyssey
Mars
Reconnaissance
Orbiter
Mars Science Laboratory
CTX
HiRISE
CRISM
SHARAD
Various
10 m, DEM 50 m
300 m
19 m
100 m
5 m, DEM 20 m
25 cm, DEM 1 m
18 m
15 m (vertical)
Favourite study area
- Window to the Martian crust (10 km deep)
- Fossilized environmental successions in the landscapes
- Variety of geological processes common to Mars and Earth
•
•
•
•
tectonic
volcanic
sedimentary
glacial, fluvial, aeolian
Valles Marineris
Valles Marineris
The whole Mars history is there!
130 km
8.5 km
Ideas
What do we need?
• more high resolution imagery
• better spectral data
• better topography
… more and better everything…
We need to go to the field!
• Check the surface (geology)
• Check the subsurface (geophysics)
Let's be innovative!
Let's explore the field!
Subsurface geophysics
Crustal structure
Crustal deformation features
Mège and Masson, 1996
Gravity-driven topographic
deformation
Mège and
Bourgeois, 2011
Subsurface structure
© Medialab, ESA 2001
Okavango Rift, Botswana
Subsurface geophysics
MT survey
• Seismicity
• Resistivity
• Magnetotelluric imaging
Gulf of Mexico
Seismic survey
Pindell et al., 2011
Mosley Bufford et al., 2012
Subsurface geophysics
• Seismicity
geophones
Geophone 4, Apollo 17
• Resistivity
• Magnetotelluric imaging
electrodes
Mole (in 2008)
Let's explore the field!
Geological field work
• Valles Marineris is nice
• It has recorded on limited surface areas more geologic events than any other site on Mars
• These successions are concentrated on small surface areas
• It has the reputation of being unpredictable (surface roughness/ellipse problem)
• It is nonsense!
MSL could have landed
in a place similar to this
in Gale Crater
MSL landing site proposed
by Chonacki and Hynek
5 different sites were proposed in VM for MSL
100 km
But the engineering constraint remains:
a huge surface area must be smooth for landing
corollary
there is not much to see
How to get safely to nice rock outcrops?
Considered option:
• Technological challenge
like the incredible Curiosity landing
• Back to the basics of space exploration:
EXPLORE instead of find what we are expecting to find
like the New Horizons spacecraft
Great discoveries are not planned!
• Scientific and technological visibility
?

The Mars balls
replace humans in the field.
• are robust and light enough to be easily
transported by wind
• travel following the wind conditions
and make observations and
measurements when stabilized
The Mars balls…

The Mars balls
Other features
• Radio communication
• Science payload: MS/HS camera and other sensors (thermal, mag…)
• Automatically inflattable for higher portance and instrument
protection between observation sites
• Internal gravity balance for instrument orientation control
• Spring/hammering mechanism to start blocked balls or change the
ball orientation for new measurements
• 10, 20, 50 items released in one flight?
• Requires good knowledge of wind conditions in Valles Marineris
Carriers that have already been developed:
KittyHawk glider, NASA Scout mission (Wendy Calvin, UNR),
was to be flown above Valles Marineris in 2003 for the 100th
anniversary of the Wright brothers' flight
ARES Scout mission payload
ARES platform (Joel Levine, NASA LaRC)
prepared for another NASA Scout mission
Let's make it true!