Mars Phobos and Deimos Survey (M-PADS) – A martian Moons orbiter and Phobos lander

Ball, Andrew; Price, Michael; Walker, Roger; Dando, Glyn C.; Wells, Nigel; Zarnecki, J. C.

doi:10.1016/j.asr.2008.04.007

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The capture could have occurred if the original body was a binary asteroid that separated due to tidal forces (Burns, 1992). Deimos is having tri-axial dimensions of about 15.6 Â 12.2 Â 10 km (Ball et al, 2009). The known mean radius of Deimos is only about 6.2 km.…”

Section: Analysis and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Indian Mars-Colour-Camera captures far-side of the Deimos: A rarity among contemporary Mars orbiters

Arya

Moorthi

Rajasekhar

et al. 2015

Planetary and Space Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Analysis and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since Deimos has a synchronous orbital period, it exhibits a tidal-locking with Mars (Ball et al, 2009), something like the Moon has with the Earth. An onlooker on Mars would mostly view the near-side of Deimos.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indian Mars-Colour-Camera captures far-side of the Deimos: A rarity among contemporary Mars orbiters

Arya

Moorthi

Rajasekhar

et al. 2015

Planetary and Space Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Venus has no satellites, while Mars has two small moons, tens of kilometers in diameter, with a surface gravity of about 1/1000 that of Earth. Phobos and Deimos were photographed by some of the early Mars probes as flyby targets of opportunity, beginning with Mariner 7 in 1969, which was a Mars flyby to study the surface and atmosphere of Mars [5]. In 1971, Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, capturing the first close-up images of Phobos and a total of 214 images of Phobos and Deimos, some as close as 1200 km with the smallest pixel scale of 30 m [6].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trajectory Design of Perseus: A CubeSat Mission Concept to Phobos

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos hold many unanswered questions that may provide clues to the origin of Mars. These moons are low Δv stopover sites to Mars. Some human missions to Mars typically identify Phobos and Deimos as staging bases for Mars surface exploration. Astronauts could base initial operations there in lieu of repeated voyages to and from the planet surface, to refuel transiting spacecraft, to teleoperate robotics and other critical machinery, and to develop habitable infrastructure ahead of human landings. Despite their strategic and scientific significance, there has been no successful dedicated mission to either moon. For this reason, we propose Perseus, a geological imaging CubeSat mission to Phobos. Perseus, a 27U, 54kg CubeSat will return thermal and visible images at resolutions better than currently available over most of Phobos’ surface. This includes visible images at 5m/pixel and thermal images at 25m/pixel of Phobos’ surface. The Perseus mission is nominally intended to be a co-orbital mission, where the spacecraft will encounter Phobos on its Martian orbit. However, a hyperbolic rendezvous mission concept, to image Phobos on a hyperbolic flyby, is also considered to reduce the risks associated with orbit capture and to reduce mission costs. This paper presents the preliminary feasibility, science objectives, and technological development challenges of achieving these science goals. We then formulate two rendezvous concepts as a series of three nonlinear optimization problems that span the design tree of mission concepts. The tree’s root node is the heliocentric cruise problem, which identifies the near-optimal launch and arrival windows for the Perseus spacecraft. The leaf nodes of the design tree are the two rendezvous concepts that identify near-optimal co-orbital and hyperbolic trajectories for Phobos’ reconnaissance. The design problems are solved using evolutionary algorithms, and the performance of the selected mission concepts is then examined. The results indicate that a co-orbital encounter allows about one encounter per day with about 6 min per encounter. The hyperbolic encounter, on the other hand, allows a single encounter where the spacecraft will spend about 2 min in the imaging region with respect to Phobos. The spacecraft will obtain higher resolution images of Phobos on this feasible region than have ever been seen for most of the surface. These detailed images will help identify candidate landing sites and provide critical data to derisk future surface missions to Phobos.

show abstract

“…The origin, composition, and evolution of the Martian moons are still very much in question with various theories, including the capture of asteroids into the Martian orbit [14]. In addition, many asteroids are thought to be surviving protoplanets and planetesimals, and can act as windows into various stages of the formation of the solar system.…”

Section: Mineralogy Of the Terrestrial Moons And Asteroidsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time-resolved Raman spectroscopy for in situ planetary mineralogy

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Planetary mineralogy can be revealed through a variety of remote sensing and in situ investigations that precede any plans for eventual sample return. We briefly review those techniques and focus on the capabilities for on-surface in situ examination of Mars, Venus, the Moon, asteroids, and other bodies. Over the past decade, Raman spectroscopy has continued to develop as a prime candidate for the next generation of in situ planetary instruments, as it provides definitive structural and compositional information of minerals in their natural geological context. Traditional continuous-wave Raman spectroscopy using a green laser suffers from fluorescence interference, which can be large (sometimes saturating the detector), particularly in altered minerals, which are of the greatest geophysical interest. Taking advantage of the fact that fluorescence occurs at a later time than the instantaneous Raman signal, we have developed a time-resolved Raman spectrometer that uses a streak camera and pulsed miniature microchip laser to provide picosecond time resolution. Our ability to observe the complete time evolution of Raman and fluorescence spectra in minerals makes this technique ideal for exploration of diverse planetary environments, some of which are expected to contain strong, if not overwhelming, fluorescence signatures. We discuss performance capability and present time-resolved pulsed Raman spectra collected from several highly fluorescent and Mars-relevant minerals. In particular, we have found that conventional Raman spectra from fine grained clays, sulfates, and phosphates exhibited large fluorescent signatures, but high quality spectra could be obtained using our time-resolved approach.

show abstract

Mars Phobos and Deimos Survey (M-PADS) – A martian Moons orbiter and Phobos lander

Cited by 12 publications

References 31 publications

Indian Mars-Colour-Camera captures far-side of the Deimos: A rarity among contemporary Mars orbiters

Indian Mars-Colour-Camera captures far-side of the Deimos: A rarity among contemporary Mars orbiters

Trajectory Design of Perseus: A CubeSat Mission Concept to Phobos

Time-resolved Raman spectroscopy for in situ planetary mineralogy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About