Making the Case for a Mission to the Martian Moon Phobos

From where did Phobos arise or arrive? The Inner or Outer Solar System? Is it dry or wet? Should we flyby or sample &return? Orshould it be Boots or Bots? In the illustration, space probes (L-R) Phobos-Grunt 2, JPL/SAR, ARC PADME. Also, Stardusts return capsule, Phobos above Mars, the Solar Nebula and the MRO HiRISE photo of Phobos. (Photos: NASA, Illustration:T.Reyes)

Ask any space enthusiast, and almost anyone will say humankinds ultimate destination is Mars. But NASA is currently gearing up to go to an asteroid. While the space agency says its Asteroid Initiative will help in the eventual goal of putting people on Mars, what if instead of going to an asteroid, we went to Mars moon Phobos?

Three prominent planetary scientists have joined forces in a new paper in the journal Planetary and Space Science to explain the case for a mission to the moons of Mars, particularly Phobos.

Phobos occupies a unique position physically, scientifically, and programmatically on the road to exploration of the solar system, say the scientists. In addition, the moons may possibly be a source of in situ resources that could support future human exploration in circum-Mars space or on the Martian surface. But a sample return mission first could provide details on the moons origins and makeup.

The Martian moonsareriddles, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Phobos and its sibling Deimos seem like just two asteroids which were captured by the planet Mars, and they remain the last objects of the inner solar system not yet studied with a dedicated mission. But should the moons be explored with flybys or sample-return? Should we consider boots or bots?

The publications and mission concepts for Phobos and Deimos are numerous and go back decades. The authors of The Value of a Phobos Sample Return, Murchie, Britt, and Pieters, explore the full breadth of questions of why and how to explore Phobos and Deimos.

Dr. Murchie isthe principal investigator of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiters CRISM instrument, a visible/infrared imaging spectrometer. He is a planetary scientist from John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) which has been at the forefront of efforts to develop a Phobos mission. Likewise, authors Dr. Britt, from the University of Central Florida, and Dr. Pieters, from Brown University, have partnered with APL and JPL in Phobos/Deimos mission proposals.

An MRO HiRise image of the Martian moon Phobos. Taken on March 23, 2008. Phobos has dimensions of 27 22 18 km, while Deimos is 15 12.2 11 km. Both were discovered in 1877 at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. (Photo: NASA/MRO/HiRISE)

APL scientists are not the only ones interested in Phobos or Deimos. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ames Research Centerand the SETI Institute have also proposed several missions to the small moons. Every NASA center has been involved at some level.

But the only mission to actually get off the ground is the Russian Space Agencys Phobos-GRUNT[ref]. The Russian mission was launched November 9, 2011, and two monthslater took a bath in the Pacific Ocean. The propulsion system failed to execute the burns necessary to escape the Earths gravity and instead, its orbit decayed despite weeks of attempts to activate the spacecraft. But thats a whole other story.

See the article here:
Making the Case for a Mission to the Martian Moon Phobos