December 1, 1999. Copyright 1999. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF MARS

LONDON, December 1, Graphic News: WHEN THE Mars Polar Lander touches down on the south pole of the Red Planet on Friday it will attempt for the first time to capture the sounds of an alien world Ð using a $15 microphone connected to a chip commonly found in talking toys and telephones.

Unlike the other instruments aboard the $165 million Mars Polar Lander, which will monitor weather and search for water, the Mars Microphone is privately funded and has no other mission except to capture the planetÕs noises.

In the unique experiment, scientists may be able to listen to 10-second sound bites of the crackle of lightning, the sound of dust clouds blowing through the thin atmosphere or even the growls of any bug-eyed monsters.

ÒThis is going to be a way of getting another sense on Mars,Ó said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, a private group that spent less than $50,000 on the entire microphone project. The signals, which will take 11 minutes to cross the 121.9 million miles (196 million km) to Earth, will be posted on the Planetary SocietyÕs Web site at http://www.planetary.org
NASAÕs Mars Polar Lander and its companion Ð the Mars Orbiter, which was lost in September Ð are part of a $327.5 million mission collectively known as Mars Surveyor Õ98, NASAÕs latest in a series of relatively inexpensive robot probes.

NASA has landed spacecraft on Mars only three times, two Vikings in 1976 and Pathfinder in 1997. All three landed in the Martian desert.

Pathfinder and its rover, Sojourner, explored the geology of the planet and found some evidence that water may once have flowed. The Mars Global Surveyor, which arrived later that year, mapped the surface and found more signs of once-flowing water.

The Polar Lander Ð 6.5 feet (2 metres) tall and 12 feet (3.6 metres) wide Ð has three legs and is equipped with a 6.5-foot (2-metre) robot arm with a scoop on the end to enable it to search for evidence of water near the frosty fringes of MarsÕ south polar cap.

A camera on the robot arm will photograph the samples before they are deposited in a tiny oven and gradually heated to 900 degrees C (1,652 degrees F) to see if the soil contains water.

If water is detected the mission could pave the way for an eventual manned exploration of the planet and could reveal vital clues to where life on the planet, even in its most primitive form, might have existed.

ÒWater as a resource would be important for the success of any manned mission. Not only can it be used for drinking, but it can be turned into rocket fuel to power a spaceship back to Earth,Ó said Project Scientist Richard Zurek at NASAÕs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Water in the form of ground ice would be ideal, Zurek said, Òbecause then it is a simple matter. You just melt it in your habitat and use it.Ó
Zurek explained that water is a potential rocket fuel. ÒYou can break it down to liberate the oxygen and then you have an oxidizer. That means you have something to burn when you combine it with some other chemical.Ó
In addition the lander has a meteorological station that will measure temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity and wind speed as well as a second camera that will take pictures of the area in which it lands.

Two additional probes Ð known as Deep Space 2 Ð are flying towards the Red Planet with the Polar Lander.

The football-sized probes are designed to smash into the planet at 400mph (645kmh), penetrating 2.5 feet (0.75 metres) into the ground. If this drastic landing technique works, the instrument packages will search for water and demonstrate lower-cost technology that could revolutionize solar system exploration.

On impact a bullet-like penetrator will plunge into the ground. Each penetrator has a small drill powered by a tiny motor. A sample of dirt will be collected and heated and the vapour analyzed by laser for evidence of water.

A cable will connect the penetrator to the above-ground unit that contains instruments and a transmitter.

The $29 million Deep Space 2 probes are part of the U.S. space agencyÕs New Millennium program, a series of inexpensive missions testing untried technology for future spacecraft.

/ENDS
Sources: JPL/NASA, Reuters, Associated Press