Weren't the Deep Space 2 probes on the Mars Polar lander geophones?
Bruce Moomaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Message
----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Green
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 2:15 PM
Subject: RE: Listening to Europa
This might be flawed thinking. Assuming the geophone is dirt cheap compared
to ice-radar and laser altimeter, the problem is landing the geophones on
the surface. Any kind of soft landing would greatly increase the cost.
Hard landing (impactor) probes might be a risk until the technology is
proven.
______________
Yep, and there's another very big problem -- the question Europa Orbiter was
originally supposed to answer (whether Europa currently has a liquid ocean)
has now been answered almost conclusively by Galileo's induced
magnetic-field measurements. It does have such an ocean, and it covers the
entire moon, rather than being broken up even into very big basins. The
main p! urpose of Europa Orbiter has now changed: it is needed to locate the
best possible landing sites for later Europa landers (of which there will be
few for a very long time) -- and that requires mapping of as much of the
moon as possible with photos, near-IR composition maps, and radar sounding
to try to locate the thinnest areas in the ice crust. Simply landing a
seismometer at one spot on the surface -- or even several spots -- won't do
that at all.
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Sincerely
James McEnanly
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