Untitled

Human exploration of the Moon and Mars: implications for Aurora

“…If life presently exists near the surface of Mars, it is possible that chemical signatures of active metabolism could be detected by suitably instrumented robot spacecraft (e.g. Hiscox 2001, Bada 2001). The proposed Pasteur payload on Aurora's EXOMARS rover shows the kind of experiments that might be attempted (ESA 2003).…”

“…Even if there is no life on Mars today, there are good grounds for believing that it may have done 3.5–4.0 billion years ago when the surface seems to have been both warmer and wetter (e.g. Hiscox 2001, de Duve 1995). If such life is now extinct, as is perhaps most likely, the task will involve searching for fossil evidence, probably fossilized bacteria (Gould 1994).…”

“…It is likely that the search for microfossils on Mars will have to proceed in a similar way, which is not readily amenable to robotic exploration (Hiscox 2001). Rather, the search will involve the microscopic analysis of such a large quantity of material, from so many different sites, that only studies by human specialists may be practical.…”

Back to the Moon?

“…Fairly soon now, a decision will be required concerning the direction of human spaceflight activities in the post‐ISS era. While Mars will have its advocates, and would indeed benefit from a programme of human exploration (for reasons given briefly by Crawford 2001; see also Spudis 1992, Hiscox 2001), consideration of the limitations imposed by our current knowledge and capabilities suggests that such a move might be premature. Sending people to Mars will be orders of magnitude more challenging and expensive than sending them back to the Moon, and there is a strong case for learning to operate successfully on the latter before attempting this greater challenge.…”

Near-infrared Raman spectra of terrestrial minerals: relevance for the remote analysis of Martian spectral signatures

“…Raman spectroscopy is now being proposed as part of an instrumentation suite for the remote detection of materials using robotic landers for planetary surface exploration [1][2][3][4][5]. There are several good reasons for this, including the ability of Raman techniques to provide molecular and molecular ionic information nondestructively from microscopic and macroscopic samples, with specimen footprints of between 1 and 100 mm.…”