Author Topic: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission  (Read 20288 times)

Online Blackstar

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #20 on: 06/06/2014 08:07 pm »

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #21 on: 06/06/2014 10:47 pm »

As an example of what can be learned from samples decades after collection we had this story today coming from Apollo data http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27688511 .  While there is a slight difference (ten orders of magnitiude between the mas of the Apollo sampldes and the likely mass of SCIM, none the less it does illustrate the value of returned material.

There's another aspect to this as well, which is that we also have high fidelity remote observations of the Moon. So you can analyze the sample and also compare it to what LRO is showing for the sample area, and what LRO shows for other parts of the Moon. It might allow you to say things like "the Apollo 15 samples are similar to the following areas we have observed on the Moon."

I was at LPSC a few months ago and was struck by the number of presentations based upon using Apollo samples with modern instruments.

As for the difference in mass amounts, a scientist explained to me that Stardust has demonstrated that it is possible to do significant science with tiny samples. Still, I think that more is better, because you can share it more, and you don't have to worry about destroying the samples if you have a lot of them.

Interesting comment about LPSC. Biblometric work by Ian Crawford suggests that the rate of publication on Apollo science is actually increasing. 

I suspect this is due to two factors; new methods and new researchers, and and the volume of sample allowing new studies.  The much smaller Luna sample suite is now largely exhausted, as are some key martian meteorites like ALH84001.

So yes, we can do amazing things with individual grains, but I think some of what is said on these lines is making virtue out of necessity! :)

The down side of analysis of tiny samples is the smaller the sample size the less we can do, some techniques, which require large samples to ensure statistically meaningful results require samples (if it's fine grained) of several kg, for example.  Working on small grains from Stardust or the Moon can be misleading - there may be processes, and almost certainly are, that skew the results.  This is OK if you have other data, which we do from the Moon and asteroids, but if it were all we had it would course problems. 

In this case it's less of an issue, because while the individual grains will be analysed, what matters is the sum of the samples.  That is what informs us about the large scale crustal processes. We do know something of martian dust already, and how it forms, how it gets into the atmosphere, what it represents, so have context to interpret the results.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #23 on: 06/06/2014 11:26 pm »
Interesting comment about LPSC. Biblometric work by Ian Crawford suggests that the rate of publication on Apollo science is actually increasing. 

I suspect this is due to two factors; new methods and new researchers, and and the volume of sample allowing new studies. 

I suspect it is also due to Constellation reviving lunar science. Constellation funded LRO, and when you have an active mission it also pumps money into the science. So lunar science has experienced a bit of a renaissance in the past decade and we're seeing the results.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #24 on: 06/06/2014 11:36 pm »
I suspect it is also due to Constellation reviving lunar science. Constellation funded LRO, and when you have an active mission it also pumps money into the science. So lunar science has experienced a bit of a renaissance in the past decade and we're seeing the results.

This is off topic here, but while LRO has made a contribution to the revival, the number of probes from elsewhere in the world has been significant. Ascribing that to Constellation is not accurate, especially because it was actually mandated by VSE and none of the follow-ups were actually followed up on.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #25 on: 06/06/2014 11:40 pm »
Interesting comment about LPSC. Biblometric work by Ian Crawford suggests that the rate of publication on Apollo science is actually increasing. 

I suspect this is due to two factors; new methods and new researchers, and and the volume of sample allowing new studies. 

I suspect it is also due to Constellation reviving lunar science. Constellation funded LRO, and when you have an active mission it also pumps money into the science. So lunar science has experienced a bit of a renaissance in the past decade and we're seeing the results.

Possibly, but it is a general and long term trend, so unlikely to be attributable to a single cause.
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Offline pagheca

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #26 on: 06/07/2014 12:10 am »
Biblometric work by Ian Crawford suggests that the rate of publication on Apollo science is actually increasing. 

I suspect this is due to two factors; new methods and new researchers, and and the volume of sample allowing new studies.  The much smaller Luna sample suite is now largely exhausted, as are some key martian meteorites like ALH84001.

Yes, really interesting. Never heard about that. I guess you got it from Crawford, I. A. 2012, Fig. 7. where I noted that:

(1) the increase is quite sensitive: from the plot, ~10 papers/year among 2001 and 2005, ~20 among 2006 and 2010.
(2) it started suddenly in 2005 and remained almost constant since then.

I tried to quickly replicate these results by searching "Apollo & Moon" in titles in ADS. I got 55 papers from 2001 to 2005, and 117 papers from 2006 to 2010, a 1:2 ratio in good agreement with the ratio shown by the certainly more sophisticated work by Crawford.

I then scrolled through the paper list found on ADS to find any evident difference between the 2 list of papers, but found nothing really obvious.

So, I guessed that something happened in the last decade that triggered this renowned interest in the scientific community about the Moon.

One thing I noticed is that since 2000 to 2005 there has been only one mission to the Moon: ESA SMART-1 in 2003, while in the period 2006-2010 there have been 7 missions (counting impactors and orbiters as one). My hypothesis is that the huge increase in the number of missions and availability of new dataset may have started a lot of interest in the Moon, Postdoc positions, etc. People that got the knowledge, the interest and the need to look into older data from the Apollo missions.
« Last Edit: 06/07/2014 12:00 pm by pagheca »

Offline baldusi

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #27 on: 06/07/2014 12:37 am »
Well, it might happen that the best money for science could be more analysis of old datasets than new missions. Nice subject to work on: optimum investment in missions vs data analysis.

Offline pagheca

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #28 on: 06/07/2014 12:40 am »
Well, it might happen that the best money for science could be more analysis of old datasets than new missions.

well, don't tell anyone, specially politicians! ;)
« Last Edit: 06/07/2014 12:41 am by pagheca »

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #29 on: 06/07/2014 04:05 am »
Possibly, but it is a general and long term trend, so unlikely to be attributable to a single cause.

I suspect that if you looked at the trend for NASA grants for lunar science, you'd see a substantial jump around 2006 or so. Yeah, instruments have been getting better since forever, but there was a long gap in U.S. lunar science missions (between Apollo and Clementine, Clementine and Prospector, and Prospector and LRO). Constellation then primed the pump and there's been a lot more lunar science since then. And it's the missions that drive the grants and data crunching.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #30 on: 06/07/2014 05:14 am »
I suspect that if you looked at the trend for NASA grants for lunar science, you'd see a substantial jump around 2006 or so. Yeah, instruments have been getting better since forever, but there was a long gap in U.S. lunar science missions (between Apollo and Clementine, Clementine and Prospector, and Prospector and LRO). Constellation then primed the pump and there's been a lot more lunar science since then. And it's the missions that drive the grants and data crunching.

Again, your sequence of missions is very sketchy. The data from these missions is available for every interested scientist.
SMART 1, 2003
Kayuga , 2007
Chang'e-1 , 2007
Chandrayaan-1, 2008

LRO came in 2009. Crediting only Constellation with surge in lunar science is disingenuous
« Last Edit: 06/07/2014 05:18 am by savuporo »
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #31 on: 06/07/2014 06:35 am »
Possibly, but it is a general and long term trend, so unlikely to be attributable to a single cause.

I suspect that if you looked at the trend for NASA grants for lunar science, you'd see a substantial jump around 2006 or so. Yeah, instruments have been getting better since forever, but there was a long gap in U.S. lunar science missions (between Apollo and Clementine, Clementine and Prospector, and Prospector and LRO). Constellation then primed the pump and there's been a lot more lunar science since then. And it's the missions that drive the grants and data crunching.

Quite possibly, but Crawford was looking at global publications which includes the results of grants from many agencies, not all of them in the US.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #32 on: 06/07/2014 06:46 am »
Well, it might happen that the best money for science could be more analysis of old datasets than new missions. Nice subject to work on: optimum investment in missions vs data analysis.


Except that if you don't invest in the mission in the first place you have no data to analyse.  Plus of course any missions only generate limited data, from which only a finite amount of information can be extracted.  If you look at Crawford's paper, it would appear that publications taper off after a while for all missions.  Apollo is unique because of the nearly 400 kg of sample collected, which is an enormous source of new data.  It is very hard to quantify the data contained in a sample, let alone the number of publications that result.

I know you suggestions is slightly tongue in cheek (at least I hope so), but there are politicians in many stripes in many nations who constantly question to acquisition of new data because "we already know enough, we just have to be smarter about how we use what we know"....
« Last Edit: 06/07/2014 06:53 am by Dalhousie »
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #33 on: 06/07/2014 06:51 am »
Biblometric work by Ian Crawford suggests that the rate of publication on Apollo science is actually increasing. 

I suspect this is due to two factors; new methods and new researchers, and and the volume of sample allowing new studies.  The much smaller Luna sample suite is now largely exhausted, as are some key martian meteorites like ALH84001.

Yes, really interesting. Never heard about that. I guess you got it from Crawford, I. A. 2012, Fig. 7. where I noted that:

(1) the increase is quite sensitive: from the plot, ~10 papers/year among 2001 and 2005, ~20 among 2006 and 2010.
(2) it started suddenly in 2005 and remained almost constant since then.

I tried to quickly replicate these results by searching "Apollo & Moon" in titles in ADS. I got 55 papers from 2001 to 2005, and 117 papers from 2006 to 2010, a 1:2 ratio in good agreement with the ratio shown by the certainly more sophisticated work by Crawford.

I then scrolled through the paper list found on ADS to find any evident difference between the 2 list of papers, but found nothing really obvious.

So, I guessed that something happened in the last decade that triggered this renowned interest in the scientific community about the Moon.

One thing I noticed is that since 2000 to 2005 there has been only one mission to the Moon: ESA SMART-1 in 2003, while in the period 2005-2010 there have been 7 missions (counting impactors and orbiters as one). My hypothesis is that the huge increase in the number of missions and availability of new dataset may have started a lot of interest in the Moon, Postdoc positions, etc. People that got the knowledge, the interest and the need to look into older data from the Apollo missions.

Nice to see this is being followed up.  Can you see what proportion of new work is linked to new missions, and which is simply looking at the samples?
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Offline baldusi

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #34 on: 06/07/2014 08:33 am »

Well, it might happen that the best money for science could be more analysis of old datasets than new missions. Nice subject to work on: optimum investment in missions vs data analysis.


Except that if you don't invest in the mission in the first place you have no data to analyse.  Plus of course any missions only generate limited data, from which only a finite amount of information can be extracted.  If you look at Crawford's paper, it would appear that publications taper off after a while for all missions.  Apollo is unique because of the nearly 400 kg of sample collected, which is an enormous source of new data.  It is very hard to quantify the data contained in a sample, let alone the number of publications that result.

I know you suggestions is slightly tongue in cheek (at least I hope so), but there are politicians in many stripes in many nations who constantly question to acquisition of new data because "we already know enough, we just have to be smarter about how we use what we know"....
It was more an academic question on what new analysis can be done with old data. Computing power has increased, signal processing has improved. I was thinking of things like the time when an exoplanet was discovered on an old Hubble image, by applying a starlight filtering technique that was developed much later.
It also raises the issue on the importance of raw sensor data, since that can be processed with new techniques later on.
And last, doing a decadal survey on data archives and potential new analysis, can't be that expensive. Think of dedicating 0.5% of SMD budget each 10 years to look for potential new analysis applications.
And obviously the importance of data archiving. Which is not a trivial issue since it might require a documentation on data structure, sensor characterization, clock drifts and many other things. Again, this would have a certain yearly cost and add to documentation cost at mission close out. But I'm talking here of fraction of percentage point on mission cost.
Since this particular mission would actually bring data, and assuming that it would be a really tiny sample, a strategy of storing a certain percentage for a couple of decades should be considered. Also, returning storage memory with raw sensor data of in-situ measures and sampling could enable future data processing discoveries.
When I talk about trade off I mean the sort of mission cost reductions measures. Say this mission is slightly over budget, then it's easy to eliminate an hypothetical flash memory from the return vehicle. Or to reduce data structure documentation from mission close out budget. Or if SMD has a budget shortfall, they can cut archiving costs by discarding recordings and such.
I believe that this should be like the NSF should be handled: a small budget that don't go up in high budget years but is never cut down in lean budget years.
For this particular mission, some very interesting things could be done and analyzed regarding future analysis.

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #35 on: 06/07/2014 01:07 pm »
It was more an academic question on what new analysis can be done with old data. Computing power has increased, signal processing has improved. I was thinking of things like the time when an exoplanet was discovered on an old Hubble image, by applying a starlight filtering technique that was developed much later.
It also raises the issue on the importance of raw sensor data, since that can be processed with new techniques later on.
And last, doing a decadal survey on data archives and potential new analysis, can't be that expensive. Think of dedicating 0.5% of SMD budget each 10 years to look for potential new analysis applications.


But keep in mind that not all data is equal. When a mission is run, the people working on it analyze the data that is of highest interest and most likely to be revelatory. They cannot look at everything, but they're hitting the stuff that they know is most important.

Data mining later is useful and occasionally can turn up interesting results, but there is a law of diminishing returns on this stuff. At LPSC somebody presented a paper based upon Voyager data from one of the outer planets flybys. I forget the specifics, but he said that there was a bit of data that had been set aside decades ago because of some processing glitch at the time and then it had been forgotten. The guy retrieved that data and did the processing and found some new results. But that kind of thing is clearly rare.

Offline pagheca

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #36 on: 06/07/2014 01:31 pm »
Nice to see this is being followed up.  Can you see what proportion of new work is linked to new missions, and which is simply looking at the samples?

We are completely OT here. Maybe we should open a new thread?

From what I could see in this quick review, these papers are really focusing on Apollo data and samples. Only a tiny minority is pointing to new missions, mainly a few articles about the landing sites.

I couldn't find any deeper description of the dataset used by Crawford, although I'm still searching. However, I wouldn't be surprised if his plot (Fig. 7 in Crawford 2012) is the result of an analysis not that different than mine, maybe just using a more refined filtering algorithm.

I quickly reviewed all the papers in the two lustra. Some of them are actual reanalysis of old dataset. An example: the seismic data can be processed with new available algorithm, inverted, etc. tools unavailable at the time because of reduced computer power and recent advancement in math (btw, a big advancement in inversion algorithms came after HST optics error was discovered and before it was fixed. So: science legacy to science legacy...).

Going back to the Apollo papers:

(1) of the 2001-2005 dataset (55 papers), 11 were not really new analysis (but book reviews, retrospectives, etc.), while the remaining 44 can be divided in: 13 reanalysis of seismic data, 29 new analysis of lunar rocks samples and 2 reanalysis of other instrumentation like the gamma ray spectrometer on board Apollo 15 and 16 modules.

(2) of the 2006-2010 dataset (117 papers), 49 reanalysis of rocks, 6 reanalysis of seismic datasets, 38 reanalysis of other experiments and the rest were unrelated.

It is interesting how new ideas started flourishing after an humble beginning.

From this quick review most of the topics come in clusters. For example, reanalysis of the heat flow experiment (Apollo 15 and 17) and its implications produced an enormous number of papers in the "other experiment" group in the second lustrum. This is mainly because some "discrepancies" in the data triggered the attention of one and then of many researchers. On the other side, the reanalysis of seismic data almost came to an end in the same period.

The number of new implications and analysis technique is astonishing and demonstrate how scientists can squeeze a lot of valuable information out of definitively old data if this is required.

I remind that this apply not only to Apollo. There is a huge number of information from robotic probes and missions that has never been processed. I read years ago that we actually make use only of the most valuable 5% of the information we retrieve from space missions. This may look as a waste, but it's normal because on the other side one can't waste time looking into something just for fun: you need some target, some ideas, some "discrepancies" triggering your interest to review large amount of data.
« Last Edit: 06/09/2014 06:09 pm by pagheca »

Offline vjkane

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #37 on: 06/08/2014 01:43 am »
According to Red Rover, SCIM was nearly selected as the first Mars Scout mission.

I do wonder what the new incarnation would add over the numerous meteorites we have from Mars.  Stardust returned samples that were otherwise unavailable on Earth.  Mars sample return will return carefully selected and well documented samples.  What will a small bulk sample of dust tell us?  I'm not throwing bricks; I really don't know based on the information on the website.

Based on SCIM's near selection for a Scout mission, the new mission should fit within a Discovery budget.  I hope that the team proposes it for this Discovery competition.  The review team can evaluate the proposal and science against other proposals.  This may be the best idea out there.

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #38 on: 06/08/2014 12:38 pm »
According to Red Rover, SCIM was nearly selected as the first Mars Scout mission.

I do wonder what the new incarnation would add over the numerous meteorites we have from Mars.  Stardust returned samples that were otherwise unavailable on Earth.  Mars sample return will return carefully selected and well documented samples.  What will a small bulk sample of dust tell us?  I'm not throwing bricks; I really don't know based on the information on the website.

Based on SCIM's near selection for a Scout mission, the new mission should fit within a Discovery budget.  I hope that the team proposes it for this Discovery competition.  The review team can evaluate the proposal and science against other proposals.  This may be the best idea out there.


Based on the website, it seems like they are not thinking Discovery and are looking for private funding, just like the B612 Foundation.

It is possible that SCIM is less scientifically useful today than it was years ago, because other missions may have negated some of its science. Plus, competing in Discovery puts it up against a lot more competitors.
« Last Edit: 06/08/2014 03:28 pm by Blackstar »

Offline pagheca

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Re: Mars Atmosphere Sample Return Mission
« Reply #39 on: 06/08/2014 08:09 pm »
I do wonder what the new incarnation would add over the numerous meteorites we have from Mars. Stardust returned samples that were otherwise unavailable on Earth.  Mars sample return will return carefully selected and well documented samples.  What will a small bulk sample of dust tell us? 

Good point, but actually there is a significative difference between samples collected (or originated) near the ground and at high altitude. First, the altitude ones are not contaminated by chemical, mechanical and physical processes happening on the ground. Second, being contaminated by meteorites and high altitude chemistry, they can help to discriminate what is really "martian" and what is not (meteorites etc.). Third, by comparing the high altitude atmosphere with the lowe one, they may help to understand how volatile are materials, that has a great importance in order to understand the history of the planet's atmosphere. Fourth, a martian meteorite passed through a lot of chemical and physical processes that make it different from the material directly collected on the planet: Apollo moon rocks fed information much more interesting than lunar meteorites.

That's why - apart all due differences between the two planets atmospheres - aircrafts like M-55 and ER-2 have been flying above 20 Km (and balloons over 40) to perform similar in-situ measurements on Earth.
« Last Edit: 06/08/2014 08:37 pm by pagheca »

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