March 22, 1996. Copyright, 1996, Graphic News. All rights reserved

RETURN TO A RED PLANET
By Nicholas Booth, Science Editor

LONDON, March 22, Graphic News- The year is 2008. A small capsule, gently floating by parachute, makes a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Aircraft and carriers are on stand-by nearby for the capsuleÕs cargo is among the most exciting ever returned from space: rocks and soil from the planet Mars. In a nutshell, that is what the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hopes to do with its Mars sample return mission, part of a new initiative to examine the Red Planet as never before. It will begin this autumn with the launch of two spacecraft that will culminate, a decade hence, with the first ever return of soil samples from Mars.

The key to this new initiative is advanced technology which, it is hoped, will keep the cost of missions down in these lean times for space exploration. In 1989, President Bush announced a grand plan to return humans to the Moon and then send them to Mars but, with a total budget of $40 billion, it was considered too expensive and was cancelled by Congress. As part of that effort, unmanned sample return missions were projected to cost $10 billion. Today, NASA believes it can do them for, at most, $200 million.

Although many spacecraft have been sent to Mars, innumerable mysteries remain. In 1976, NASAÕs twin Viking probes landed on the surface and performed limited scientific investigations. They found that the Martian sky is pink due to the amount of dust blown around by often fierce surface winds. The dust particles themselves are very fine and cohesive. Because Mars is not protected by an ozone layer, ultraviolet light streams down to the surface unhindered, making the possibility of life remote. The Vikings found that the surface soil would destroy any microbes due to the extreme levels of ultraviolet radiation.

Although sophisticated for their time, the Vikings were limited. The new approach being undertaken by NASA is that, instead of sending limited laboratories to Mars, samples will be brought back and analysed with the full panoply of equipment here.
In recent years, Mars missions have been plagued by technical mishaps, most notably in August 1993 when NASAÕs Mars Observer was lost just hours before it reached the Red Planet. NASAÕs assault on Mars later this year uses spare hardware built for that mission which has been repackaged to form the Mars Global Surveyor mission, due for launch in November, to be followed a month later by a mini-lander known as the Mars Pathfinder. 

The Mars sample return mission is by far the most ambitious ever attempted by NASA and its engineers are keen to inaugurate new technology to make it happen. A number of options are under consideration, the most exciting involving the production of fuel from the Martian soil which would not require the sending of a large rocket stage to return the sample-carrying capsule back to Earth. Although many wonder whether the new technology can be developed in time, NASAÕs commitment remains to return samples of Martian soil during the first decade of the new millennium. 

Sources: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Aviation Week