| 21 May (Friday) | ||
|---|---|---|
| 13:00-13:15 | Takafumi Matsui (Director of Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology) | |
| Opening Remarks | ||
| 13:15-14:15 | Tilman Spohn (Head of the Institute of Planetary Research, German Aerospace Center) | |
| Structure and Evolution of Mars | ||
| The interior structure of Mars has been modeled using gravity data to calculate the Moment of Inertia (MoI) factor and the composition of the SNC meteorites. In calculating the MoI factor a correction needs to be applied to relate the MoI about the rotation axis to the average MoI. There is little chance to improve on the reliability of these models which in terms of the core radius is about 10% or so. Better estimates will require data from seismic networks. A network mission is being planned for 2020 by the European Space Agency potentially together with NASA which would include heat flow probes and other geophysical instruments in addition to seismometers. The uncertainty in the core radius has a bearing on mantle convection models. For sufficiently small core radii a perovskite layer may exist at the bottom of the mantle that may trigger the formation of superplumes and upon becoming unstable even phases of enhanced core cooling. High resolution stereo images from the HRSC on the ESA Mars Express mission suggest that Mars was volcanically active until a few hundred million years ago which suggests comparatively small cooling rates of the mantle. This may be due to an insulating effect of the crust on the mantle. The easiest explanation of the absence of a present day magnetic field is the absence of a growing inner core which would again point to small cooling rates but may also be caused by a composition of the core close to eutectic. The HRSC images have been used to argue against a widely warm and wet early Mars at least since the late Noachian (approx. 4 Ga ago). Instead, the images suggest dry and wet phases intermittent in time and locally. This observation can be taken to argue against a wide-spread biosphere at the time - at least for Earth like live forms - but primitive life forms may be speculated to have existed in ecological niches and may continue to exist even to the present day. | ||
| 14:15-15:15 | Kevin Righter (Johnson Space Center, NASA) | |
| Experimental petrology and geochemical constraints on martian differentiation and later magmatism | ||
| High pressure and temperature experimental petrology provides constraints on the differentiation and magmatic history of Mars. Metal-silicate equilibria define conditions of core formation that suggest an intermediate depth magma ocean, in agreement with independent estimates from lithophile isotopic systems (Nd, Hf, Sr) and trace elements. Sulfur solubility in FeO-rich basaltic melts like martian basalt and shergottites is higher than that of terrestrial basalt; sulfur erupted onto the surface came almost entirely from the interior during degassing of S-bearing basaltic liquid. The role of Fe, C, O, and H equilibria during mantle melting indicates that graphite (C) in the mantle may control fO2 as a function of depth and control the range of fO2 recorded in martian meteorites. These findings have fundamental implications for the early differentiation and subsequent development of core, mantle, crust and atmosphere. | ||
| 15:45-16:15 | Kyeong J. Kim (Korea Institute of Geoscience And Mineral Resources) | |
| Understanding Mars using the Mars Odyssey Gamma-Ray Spectrometer | ||
| The 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, launched in April 2001, has been successfully conducting its mission up to now for determination of the elemental composition of the surface of Mars, understanding of water ice distributions on Mars, and mineralogical mapping of the Mars. Many important scientific findings have been published throughout scientific communities since 2002 by both GRS and THEMIS research groups. This talk will provide a general overview of the 2001 Mars Odyssey program and then focus on the Mars Odyssey's GRS program. The GRS spectrometer has confirmed the presence of water ice at both the North and South poles as well as fairly high hydrogen concentrations for parts of the equatorial regions. Details of the Martian gamma ray spectra and elemental maps of Mars obtained by the gamma ray spectrometer will be presented. In addition, new understanding of Mars using GRS data to unravel geological histories and current Martian environments will be also demonstrated. | ||
| 16:15-17:15 | Jitendra N. Goswami (Director of Physical Research Laboratory, India) | |
| The new Moon: Results from Chandrayaan-1 | ||
|
The Chandrayaan-1 mission, launched on 22nd October, 2008 using an
indigenous launch vehicle PSLV-XL, carried five payloads designed and
developed in India along with one Indo-UK and one Indo-Swedish
collaborative payloads, and four foreign payloads, two from USA and one
each from Germany and Bulgaria. The mission operation was relatively
smooth until August 28, 2009, when loss of communication with the
spacecraft led to early termination of the Mission. Most of the payloads
have collected significant data of excellent quality during the mission
duration. Chandrayaan-1 represents a truly international effort in
planetary exploration.
The detection of Hydroxyl and water molecule in lunar surface material
is a major discovery by the Chandrayaan-1 Mission. This finding was
confirmed by analysis of both new and archived data obtained by Deep
Impact and Cassini missions. Observations made by a synthetic aperture
radar yielded data suggesting presence of sub-surface ice at the base of
a large number of permanently shadowed small craters near the lunar North
Pole. A mass spectrometer on board the Moon Impact Probe detected possible
presence of water molecule in the lunar exosphere. The imaging
spectrometers on the Chandrayaan-1 and on Kaguya mission confirmed
widespread presence of crystalline feldspar in lunar highlands that
validates the lunar global magma ocean hypothesis. The imaging instruments
also provided new insights on lunar surface composition and led to the
first detection of refractory rock types of lunar origin. The observed
reflection of up to twenty percent of solar wind protons, incident on
lunar surface, as neutral hydrogen was an unexpected result. Low energy
X-ray spectrometer on board Chandrayaan-1 detected signals of Mg, Al, Si,
Ca, Ti and Fe from lunar surface during the few low intensity solar flare
events that took place during the mission.
The Chandrayaan-1 mission has contributed significantly to our
understanding of the lunar evolution, made path breaking discovery,
provided significant new results and generated an excellent set of data
using a multitude of payloads that will be very useful for lunar and
planetary scientists across the globe.
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| 18:00- | Social Meeting: Welcome to PERC/Chitech | |
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| 22 May (Saturday) | ||
| 9:30-10:30 | Roger C. Wiens (ChemCam Principal Investigator for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory rover, Los Alamos National Laboratory) | |
| The Mars Science Laboratory Mission: Goals, Mission Overview, and Potential Landing Sites | ||
| The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission is to follow after the successful twin MER rover missions. Mars exploration with MSL, to be launched in 2011, will be inherently different from MER in several key areas: 1) it is designed to travel outside of its landing ellipse, allowing us to target geological features that are too rough to land on, and 2) Its instrument suite includes sensitive mass spectrometers, high spatial resolution elemental analysis, x-ray diffraction, a drill, higher resolution cameras, and many other innovations. These features support the overall scientific objectives of the mission, which are to assess the biological potential of at least one target environment, characterize the geology of the landing region at all spatial scales, and investigate planetary processes that influence habitability. The mission is not directly looking for life, but we hope to characterize the potential for life by identifying organic compounds and other chemical building blocks, and observing features that record the actions of biologically relevant processes. The four candidate landing sites, all of which contain phyllosilicates, are Mawrth Valles, with the apparent highest phyllosilicate concentrations, Gale Crater, characterized by inverted stream beds and extensive layered sedimentary deposits, Holden Crater, which has alluvial fans, flood deposits, and a lake bed, and Eberswalde Crater, with extensive deltaic deposits and inverted channels. | ||
| 10:30-11:30 | Agustin Chicarro (Mars Express Project Scientist, ESA-ESTEC) | |
| The European Robotic Exploration of the Planet Mars | ||
| 13:00-14:00 | Sushil K. Atreya (Professor of Atmospheric and Space Science, University of Michigan) | |
| The Habitability of Mars: Current Understanding from Trace Constituents, and Prospects for Planned and Conceived Future Exploration | ||
| 2003 was a watershed year for Mars. Two trace constituents, hydrogen peroxide and methane were detected in the planet's atmosphere. While hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an oxidant that can efficiently scavenge organics, methane (CH4), the simplest of all organic molecules, is a metabolic byproduct of life as we know it. On the other hand, geochemical processes could also produce methane. In each case, water (H2O) plays a central role - water vapor for the production of peroxide, and liquid water for methane, irrespective of its origin. (Liquid) water is essential to life as we know it since it is ideal as a solvent and medium for enzyme-catalyzed biochemical reactions and transport of nutrients. Water is also essential to geological production of methane, by a process that involves serpentinization. Thus the fate of methane, organics and peroxide is intertwined. The habitability of Mars, now or in the planet's warmer and wetter past, is a complex issue, however, that requires extremely precise measurements of several key trace constituents and isotopes together with geological and environmental context data, which are presently not available but help is on the way. In this talk I will attempt to address the above issues. www.umich.edu/~atreya for downloading author's publications. | ||
| 14:00-15:00 | Vittorio Formisano (Head of Research, National Council for Research's Institute of Physics and Interplanetary Space, Italy) | |
| PFS-MEX and the discovery of methane in martian atmosphere | ||
| 15:30-16:00 | T.Kubota (JAXA, Japan) | |
| Japan's Mars Exploration Plan | ||
| The working group for future Japanese Mars exploration has been established in September 2008. The ultimate goal of Mars exploration is to fully understand the evolution of Martian atmosphere, the water, and its climate. To significantly reduce uncertainties in the current models, this mission includes the following three science objectives, "Escaping Atmosphere", "Meteorology", "Interior Structure". The working group is studying the next Mars exploration missions, MELOS including orbiters and landers. This paper describes the candidate plans of Japanese Mars exploration by orbiters and landers, which are under discussion by MELOS WG group. This paper also presents the technical challenges, which are required to achieve such advanced exploration. | ||
| 16:00-16:30 | Ayako Matsuoka (ISAS/JAXA, Japan) | |
| Orbiters for the investigation of the atmospheric escape from Mars in the MELOS mission | ||
| Recent Martian missions have brought new information about the distributions of water and carbon dioxide on Mars. In the MELOS working group we are examining the orbiters to investigate the escaping process of the atmosphere from Mars. Our scopes are; 1. to investigate the escape of C, H and O from the present Mars into the space, and study the evolution of the atmosphere and surface environment; 2. to investigate the role of the micro-scale escaping process in the global phenomena. We are planning to have two orbiters to achieve the scientific objectives. Instruments for the neutral and charged particles are installed in one of the orbiters (in-situ orbiter) and imaging cameras and solar-wind monitor are installed in the other (remote-sensing orbiter). The combination of the in-situ observations with remote-sensing observations will enable to study the essential plasma process causing the global atmospheric escape. The heritage of Planet-B (NOZOMI, launched in 1989) is our good advantage to investigate the atmospheric escape from Mars. | ||
| 16:30-17:00 | Takeshi Imamura (ISAS/JAXA, Japan) | |
| Strategy of exploring the Martian meteorology and water cycle with an orbiter | ||
| We are discussing a possible future Mars exploration using an orbiter dedicated to meteorological and climate studies. The orbiter will carry imaging spectrometers and a sub-mm sounder, with which the wind and temperature fields and the water/dust transport will be observed from high altitudes. | ||
| 17:00-17:30 | Hideaki Miyamoto (The University Museum, The University of Tokyo) | |
| Landing part of the MELOS mission: Possible mission plans | ||
| MELOS's lander subgroup is now discussing mission concepts within the framework of the MELOS mission. Three mission concepts have been proposed; (1) a rover mission to explore a volcanic field mainly to perform petrological analyses for understanding the volcanic history, (2) a landing mission composed of a couple of landers for seismic measurements to understand the seismic activity and the internal structure of Mars, and (3) a sample-return mission without landing to obtain atmosphere and dust particles. This talk will report the current status of the discussions within the working group. | ||
| 17:30-18:00 | Noriyuki Namiki (Deputy director of Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology) | |
| Contributions of PERC to future Mars and lunar explorations | ||
| Planetary Exploration Research Center (PERC) of Chitech is leading Japanese rover mission to Mars to be launched in 2020. We are promoting interactions between science groups and engineering groups of universities and institutions as a group leader of scientific instruments. Also we are developing Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to be installed on robot arm of Mars rover by a help of Future Robot Research Center as a joint research of planetary robotic experiments in Chitech. For LIBS on the Moon, a collaboration by CESR in France, Universidad de Valladolid in Spain, and PERC has been proposed for SELENE-2 mission. | ||
| 18:00 | Takafumi Matsui | |
| Closing Remarks | ||
| PERC/Chitech Staffs | |
|---|---|
| Takafumi Matsui | Director of PERC/Chitech |
| Noriyuki Namiki | Deputy director of PERC/Chitech |
| Tomoko Arai | Staff Scientist |
| Masanori Kobayashi | Staff Scientist |
| Hiroki Senshu | Staff Scientist |
| Koji Wada | Staff Scientist |
| Kazuhisa Goto | Staff Scientist |
| Sohsuke Ohno | Staff Scientist |
| Ko Ishibashi | Associate Staff Scientist |
| Shingo Kameda | Associate Staff Scientist |