[meteorite-list] Possible Phobos sampling mission

[Darren Garrison]

http://www.focusmag.co.uk/newsread.asp?ID=27060

PROBE PLANNED FOR PHOBOS
09:20:34  13/02/2007

'Practice run’ for Mars sampling mission announced
A British team is working on a concept mission to land a spacecraft on Mars’s
small moon, Phobos, take samples from its surface and bring them back to Earth.

Scientists from the Open University and British satellite manufacturer Astrium
are involved. 

The plan is for a mothership to orbit Mars before it releases a smaller probe
onto the surface of Phobos, where it will drill or scoop and sample surface
material. 

Then it will use chemical thrusters to lift off from the surface of the moon and
dock onto the mothership, where it will be automatically packaged into a
protective sealed container and flown near to Earth. It will be jettisoned from
the mothership to Earth in a ‘hard’ landing.


The mission will last three years and is planned for 2016. Although
technologically complex in its own right, the probe’s visit to the moon is being
treated as a ‘practice run’ for a joint UK/US mission planned for within the
next 15-20 years, to sample rocks from Mars itself.

The main difficulty is getting the sampler on and off the planet. The team hopes
hoping to hone necessary skills on the smaller Phobos before tackling the
bigger, higher-gravity Mars. 

It’s hoped the moon samples will themselves contain fragments of Martian soil
that will have been flung up over the billions of years that meteorites have
been striking Mars.