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Life-Seeking Microscope Slated for Next Mars Landing
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
17 August 2000
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mars_microscope_000816 TORONTO, Canada -- A Mars-exploration advocacy group has embarked on a campaign to raise funds to sponsor a life-seeking microscope aboard the next spacecraft set to land on the Red Planet, although lander officials say they have agreed to no such deal. Either way, the instrument is to be toted to Mars on the British-built Beagle 2 lander. If on schedule, it will be the first microscope placed on Mars, said Peter Smith, senior research scientist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. He is building the unit with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
The British-built Beagle 2 is set to tote a privately funded microscope to Mars. "No microscope has ever been flown to Mars before," Smith told SPACE.com. The microscope will be attached to the lander's robotic arm -- now referred to as the Beagle's "paw." The move to sponsor the instrument, which will cost about $50,000, echoes a Planetary Society project to put a similarly priced, and also privately funded, microphone on the Martian surface. The instrument was carried aboard the Mars Polar Lander, but that spacecraft was lost at Mars in December 1999. The Mars Society announced the fundraising campaign for the microscope at last week's Mars Society convention in Toronto. Microscopic maneuvers While the microscope is on the Beagle 2's manifest of science instruments, the Mars Society's claim of sponsorship of the device is incorrect, said a top official of the Beagle 2 project. "This deal certainly does not exist," said Colin Pillinger, lead scientist for the Beagle 2 effort, and professor of planetary sciences research at the Open University, located in Milton Keynes, the United Kingdom. "I welcome the enthusiasm of the Mars Society, there's no doubt about that. However, all sponsorship arrangements regarding Beagle 2 have to be arranged via the project. So separate deals with anybody on the team are not appropriate," Pillinger told SPACE.com. All sponsorship arrangements are negotiated solely by Beagle 2 project officials or the London-based M&C Saatchi Sponsorship Ltd, who joined with Beagle 2 to coordinate the commercial development of the project, Pillinger said. Beagle to sniff for life A British consortium of universities, research support teams and industry leads the design of Beagle 2. It will be the first lander to conduct a full suite of life-detection experiments on Mars and will be attached to the European Space Agency's Mars Express, now slated for launch in June 2003. After its release from the Mars Express, Beagle 2 is scheduled to touchdown in late December 2003. Carrying the first microscope to Mars, along with other achievements, may be a short-lived coup for the Beagle 2, however. ~ Two NASA robotic rovers could steal the show on January 2 and January 20 of 2004 when they land on Mars. Each will cart along, among other instruments, a microscopic imager. Beagle buddy The Beagle 2 lander weighs less than 66 pounds (30 kilograms), with almost a third of its payload designed to carry out various types of surface studies. The lander's robotic arm will be outfitted with several instruments, including the microscope. A small grinder on the arm will clean dust and other Martian weathering debris from rock surfaces, with the microscope then moving into position for closeup looks. The microscope is capable of scanning rock and soil with a 3-micron resolution -- that's a small fraction of the width of a single human hair. Tiny lamps can bathe the area under microscopic inspection in various colors. Also, an ultraviolet lamp permits a look for fluorescence in Martian rocks for the first time ever, Smith said. That fluorescence could be a signpost for biological organisms, he added. Just the beginning Fresh from success in setting up a simulated Mars outpost on Devon Island this summer in the Canadian Arctic, Mars Society President Robert Zubrin said the advocacy group also plans to move forward rapidly to raise funds for a suite of Mars-like habitats on Earth. Zubrin said that the six-person Devon Island habitat "is the first step in getting the Mars program started." To press ahead, funds are being sought for follow-on habitats to be placed at other Mars-like locales around the globe. Desert sites in the United States, as well as spots in Australia and Iceland, are under review, Zubrin said. Yet another Mars Society project being pursued is constructing a pressurized roving vehicle that would be a prototype for a later vehicle that could carry astronauts around on the planet's surface, Zubrin said. The idea is to help astronauts speed around the surface of Mars, rather than traveling on foot. That way, they could make better use of their fieldwork time during surface excursions. 
A drawing of the pressurized rover vehicle The Mars Society's pressurized rover concepts would be built to truck around on Earth, with the idea that lessons learned could be incorporated in actual rovers later sent to Mars. These rovers would be capable of withstanding the low-pressure atmosphere on Mars for weeklong field trips, carrying explorers in shirtsleeves, rather than spacesuits. "Little in the way of engineering, architectural or operational research has been completed to build such a rover," Zubrin said.
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