[meteorite-list] NASA Targets Moons of Mars for Potential Robotic Mission

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.space.com/25312-nasa-mars-moons-phobos-deimos.html 

NASA Targets Moons of Mars for Potential Robotic Mission
By Mike Wall
space.com
April 3, 2014

Scientists and engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, 
Calif., are drawing up a low-cost mission concept that would send a robotic 
spacecraft to one of Mars' two tiny satellites, Phobos and Deimos.

The probe would be based heavily on the space agency's $280 million Lunar 
Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), an Ames-led effort that 
has been circling Earth's moon since September 2013. [Moons of Mars: Amazing 
Photos of Phobos and Deimos]

"We think we can do 'LADEE 2' for a few hundred million [dollars] and 
go to Phobos," Ames director Pete Worden said during a presentation in 
February at the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts symposium at Stanford 
University.

The original LADEE relies not on custom-crafted, mission-specific infrastructure 
but rather an Ames-developed "modular common spacecraft bus" that can 
be adapted for a variety of uses and destinations. The modular approach 
would help keep the potential LADEE 2's costs down, Worden said.

"We've got some spare hardware hanging around here that we could make 
it even lower-cost," he said during a NASA budget news briefing on March 
4.

LADEE 2 could launch sometime after NASA's bold asteroid-capture mission, 
Worden added. The space agency is still mapping out the details of its 
asteroid-redirect effort - which aims to drag a near-Earth space rock 
into a stable lunar orbit for future visitation by astronauts - but current 
projections call for lofting the capture probe around 2019, with the asteroid 
arriving in lunar orbit in 2024 or 2025.

There is no money for LADEE 2 in the NASA budget, Worden stressed, so 
it remains a concept mission for now.

"This is one we're very excited about," he said. "We'd like to see it 
be a planned mission, but we have some work to do first."

Most scientists think Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that were 
captured by Mars' gravity. Phobos is 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide on 
average, while Deimos has a diameter of just 7.7 miles (12.4 km). (For 
comparison, Earth's moon is 2,160 miles, or 3,475 km, wide).

A robotic mission to Phobos or Deimos could help pave the way for an eventual 
manned trip to one of these moons. The prospect of a human "base camp" 
on Phobos or Deimos is enticing to many researchers, who envision teleoperating 
rovers on the Martian surface and studying samples launched from the Red 
Planet up into orbit. (Phobos orbits a mere 3,700 miles, or 6,000 km, 
from Mars; Deimos circles at an average distance of 12,470 miles, or 20,070 
km).

NASA officials have said repeatedly that putting boots on Mars is the 
long-term goal of the agency's human spaceflight program. But they are 
considering manned missions to Phobos or Deimos as a potential precursor, 
and possibly as a way to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet 
by the mid-2030s - a goal laid out by President Barack Obama in 2010.

NASA already has two functioning rovers on the Martian surface - Opportunity 
and Curiosity - and two operating orbiters, Mars Odyssey and the Mars 
Reconnaissance Orbiter. Another orbiter, called MAVEN, launched in November 
and is scheduled to arrive in September. The agency also plans to launch 
a lander called InSight toward the Red Planet in 2016 and a sample-caching, 
Curiosity-like rover in 2020.