InSight launching in 2018

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

I think it’s a result of the extreme emphasis on the threat of reverse contamimation. Excepting those that argue against any Mars samples being brought in contact with humans under any circumstances whatsoever, many consider an automated reentry to be unacceptably risky, and call for the sample to be retrobraked into Earth orbit and either studied in situ in a whole dedicated space station, or being brought down in a manned ship because that’s somehow safer.

So yeah, best way.

Same as the best way to study Martian life is to NEVER land humans on Mars.

More of an problem, an Mars sample return mission is pretty much running an robotic program who is more complex than the Apollo moon landings, yes its scaled down but complexity is higher. 
You need to recover an sample package from an rover. You probably want an mini rover for this an the original one might be dead.You need to load this into an small rocket.
Launch it to orbit then dock with an orbital return craft and move the package into the return module. 
Now you dump the docking and package transfer module and upper stage of the orbital module, think docking with an Soyuz craft and dumping the orbital stage.
Wait for an earth return burn, return and then you dump the service module. before reentry. 

So its an very complex and high risk operation. 
Yes its some chance of fail of the parachute of the return module and contamimation from the samples. But hypothetical martians microbes will face some challenges like the oxygen in the air and an ecosystem who main focus the last billion years has not been surviving the environment but not getting eaten. 

[lajoswinkler]

Excellent landing.

Better quality image, correctly white balanced.

[DAL59]

Its pretty close to the curiosity, only a couple hundred miles away.  

[Shpaget]

3 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Its pretty close to the curiosity, only a couple hundred miles away.  

So they could hypothetically meet in about a year.

[eagle92lightning]

Ladies and Gentlemen WE HAVE CONFIRMED TOUCHDOWN!

[DDE]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

You need to recover an sample package from an rover. You probably want an mini rover for this an the original one might be dead.You need to load this into an small rocket.
Launch it to orbit then dock with an orbital return craft and move the package into the return module. 

Typically this is somewhat simplified. The Mars orbit rendezvous can be omitted via a bigger ascent vehicle, and the potential death of the original rover is mostly a result of the... dubious? Half-arsed? ...way NASA approaches its supposed sample retrieval program (which, if we’re to judge by their previous megaproject, is going to get repurposed into a Moon sample return ). Hell, the more basic sample return programs don’t even use rover-based caching at all.

[tater]

 

[Brotoro]

Insight's solar panels are open. Huzzah.

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, DDE said:

Typically this is somewhat simplified. The Mars orbit rendezvous can be omitted via a bigger ascent vehicle, and the potential death of the original rover is mostly a result of the... dubious? Half-arsed? ...way NASA approaches its supposed sample retrieval program (which, if we’re to judge by their previous megaproject, is going to get repurposed into a Moon sample return ). Hell, the more basic sample return programs don’t even use rover-based caching at all.

You are correct however an direct return from mars surface would require something of the red dragon scale as the return rocket would have to be significantly larger, weighting over an ton. 
think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-140_ATACMS rater than an something smaller than an TOW missile. you need an far larger lander to land it and it launch platform. 
You could drop the backup rover and gamble on your collecting rover can deliver it, but with an mars direct return your mission size could just as well include it. 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

7 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

The Mars is so small and crapped spotted.

Maybe before trying to return a column sample, a tungsten rod bombardment would be better?

They should get some open pits to view the picture from orbit and to grab something from bottom without drilling?

Edited November 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[tater]

[DDE]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

You are correct however an direct return from mars surface would require something of the red dragon scale as the return rocket would have to be significantly larger, weighting over an ton. 

Bigger. Much bigger.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/5m-final.html

[Green Baron]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

  Reveal hidden contents

The Mars is so small and crapped spotted.

Maybe before trying to return a column sample, a tungsten rod bombardment would be better?

They should get some open pits to view the picture from orbit and to grab something from bottom without drilling?

We have meteorites from mars, enough to let us know that there is a crust and an upper mantle (yeah, Mars has such things, but they are different from Earth's).

What is needed to answer questions more in detail are samples from places that we can assume to tell us more about the processes like what happened to the water, the atmosphere, how did the geographical structures form are analyses of samples taken from specific sites on Mars. A "bombardment" is no good idea, it would only mess things up.

------------------

But the role of the InSight mission is to "deepen", if possible, our knowledge about the large encompassing processes that formed the planet Mars, like the internal structure and crustal energy budgets.

[kerbiloid]

17 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

We have meteorites from mars, enough to let us know that there is a crust and an upper mantle (yeah, Mars has such things, but they are different from Earth's).

What is needed to answer questions more in detail are samples from places that we can assume to tell us more about the processes like what happened to the water, the atmosphere, how did the geographical structures form are analyses of samples taken from specific sites on Mars. A "bombardment" is no good idea, it would only mess things up.

The drilling is expensive and requires a lot of heavy equipment.

So, a tungsten rod hit and a small single-use rover from the toy shop maybe could help to choose the proper places for that drilling.
Nothing can go wrong with a metal rod when it's already launched. No headache with its landing. And you can buy send several mini-rovers for this pit or even research its bottom from orbit.
So, you can send a score of them.

Also a well-aimed rod can crash a hill slope and allow you to view from orbit what's inside.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

34 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The drilling is expensive and requires a lot of heavy equipment.

Those meteorites come automatically ;-)

Quote

So, a tungsten rod hit and a small single-use rover from the toy shop maybe could help to choose the proper places for that drilling.
Nothing can go wrong with a metal rod when it's already launched. No headache with its landing. And you can buy send several mini-rovers for this pit or even research its bottom from orbit.

Do you suppose that you drop something and a few months later we have dust from the impact on earth ? I don't understand ...

Quote

Also a well-aimed rod can crash a hill slope and allow you to view from orbit what's inside.

This is not the right way. You'll expose things you don't want to expose, change the chemistry, layering, composition. Iow, you totally mess things up you want to analyse. A sediment analysis these days needs samples from untouched places, for example to look at the layering and arrangement of minerals under a microscope if you want to know if they were deposited by wind, water, under what chemistry, from which direction etc. pp.

Edit: And one wants an unaltered composition to judge if the chemistry is original or was changed, if minerals where exposed to temperature/pressure conditions, have had contact to flowing or blowing stuff like water or atmosphere, etc. Then you crush samples, send them through an accelerator and count the number and weight of molecules on the other end. Just as an example ... :-)

A bombardment is counterproductive, would probably lead to nice pictures and a feeling of accomplishment, but not add to knowledge.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Those meteorites come automatically

Then why fly to there to get the Martian ground?

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Do you suppose that you drop something and a few months later we have dust from the impact on earth ? I don't understand ...

We drop the rod. It makes a pit (a crater). An orbital recon makes multispectral photos of the underground down to several meters deep.
If necessary, drop there a toy rover on batteries with simple tools. 

After a score of pits choose the place to send a serious driller with a sample return rocket.

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

You'll expose things you don't want to expose, change the chemistry, layering, composition. Iow, you totally mess things up you want to analyse.

It's a recon mission with a Big Dumb Probe, not a deep research, so it could be enough good.
Once you have found a really interesting place, you send a serious researcher. 
Also probably in most places a pit/ a crashed slope is enough at all, as there is nothing specific there.

P.S.
Also every rod hit generates a seismic wave and can work together with several seismic sensors across the planet.

Edited November 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Then why fly to there to get the Martian ground?

Because it can take 4.5 billion years and things might have changed in between.

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

We drop the rod. It makes a pit (a crater). An orbital recon makes multispectral photos of the underground down to several meters deep. If necessary, drop there a toy rover on batteries with simple tools. 

It is a silly idea, because you only mess things up and gain nothing new from it except a peep show of an impact.

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

After a score of pits choose the place to send a serious driller with a sample return rocket.

Nasa has calculated a return mission and decided and it is too expensive yet and takes too long time.

You have at least 3 missions which in themselves cost much more than a single mission, but has destroyed information on the ground and leaves you with something from a depth where relevance is unclear and conditions less known. It is a valueless experiment without defined parameters for a cost of three missions.

You can as well combine the efforts of your proposed dropping, peeping and subsequent boring and probe return into a single dedicated lab mission.

More gained, less spent, nothing messed up.

Until one day someone collects real samples and brings them here.

[kerbiloid]

8 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Because it can take 4.5 billion years and things might have changed in between.

So, how do the marsiorites relate to the sample return?

8 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

It is a silly idea, because you only mess things up and gain nothing new from it except a peep show of an impact.

It will mess things from pov of a detailed structure analysis, but it makes an explosion scheme of several meters underground to look if there is something enough deserving a detailed research rather than another piece of a rock waste.
So, a heavy and expensive researching lander will land in A Very Special Place. Others will be sorted out by quick-and-dirty methods.

8 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Nasa has calculated a return mission and decided and it is too expensive yet and takes too long time.

Another argument to first make a quick-and-dirty review of potential landing sites.

8 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

You have at least 3 missions which in themselves cost much more than a single mission, but has destroyed information on the ground and leaves you with something from a depth where relevance is unclear and conditions less known.

"I have" a research orbiter which anyway orbits there for years. No additional mission.
And several ICBM-like launches with no landing or interplanetary command-and-control.
Because it's a piece of metal. Once launched, it flies. No chutes, no engines, no heatshield, no legs, no landing, no roving.
Just a rocket is spent. And if this is Falcon, even it not totally.

Edited November 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[MinimumSky5]

Just a geologists veiw here... 

Orbital bombardment for in situ samples is an utterly terrible idea, as you've lost all context of the sample you have, delicate structures will be smashed beyond recognition, and thermal and shock metamorphosis could have altered details of the sample you wanted to measure. 

Let's run through a scenario here. You conduct orbital bombardment, the rover caches some interesting white, powdery rocks, and on inspection when back on earth, we find that the rocks are limestone. Most limestone is biological in origin, but they can also form from the runoff of melting ice sheets, and Mars has had at least one episode of large scale melting. Context from the country rock would show glacial dropstones, striations from ice sheets or icebergs, or isotopic signitures of rising temperatures, all of which indicate abiogenic cap carbonates, not biogenic limestone. 

And no, lack of fossils do not indicate that the limestone is abiogenic, cyanobacteria form a type of limestone called micrite, which has no fossil evidence of life inside the rock. 

[kerbiloid]

43 minutes ago, MinimumSky5 said:

Let's run through a scenario here. You conduct orbital bombardment, the rover caches some interesting white, powdery rocks, and on inspection when back on earth, we find that the rocks are limestone.

No.
The rover collects not the rock crashed with the bombardment.
It gathers it a (say) kilometer aside by drilling.
The impactors are to s(p)end as few heavy rovers as possible.

You make ten pits across the planet, then send one heavy rover to the most pleasant place to drill up some samples from the untouched rock.

Edited November 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Geoscience background here too :-)

Again, InSight's mission is to tell us about Mars' interior structure and heat flow in the crust.

-----------------

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

So, how do the marsiorites relate to the sample return?

They are assumed to be from impacts on Mars. They show typical signs of originating from the upper mantel and have traces of shock.

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It will mess things from pov of a detailed structure analysis, but it makes an explosion scheme of several meters underground to look if there is something enough deserving a detailed research rather than another piece of a rock waste.

Which is useless knowledge as you do not see the details you want from orbit. We have enough remote sensing stuff around which has led to some (more or less founded) guessing and some findings. Now we have detail questions.

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Another argument to first make a quick-and-dirty review of potential landing sites.

Again, you do NOT gain valuable information about conditions at a potential landing site by bombing it and viewing the hole from orbit. That is a misconception, maybe triggered by all the remote sensing from the past.

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

"I have" a research orbiter which anyway orbits there for years. No additional mission.

Your orbiter's resolution is too small to analyse the crater you made with your ICBM. See Schiaparelli impact. Now you have a contaminated spot you want to get rid off before analysing anything.

 

 

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

No.
The rover collects not the rock crashed with the bombardment.
It gathers it a (say) kilometer aside by drilling.
The impactors are to s(p)end as few heavy rovers as possible.

Forget the bombing. Send the mission right away without any side effects. You get no information from bombing, dig it ;-)

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Again, you do NOT gain valuable information about conditions at a potential landing site by bombing it and viewing the hole from orbit. That is a misconception, maybe triggered by all the remote sensing from the past.

Why do they study craters and recognize "old" and "young" ones?

10 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

See Schiaparelli impact.

~200 m/s and <1 t?

P.S.
Schiaparelli from orbit. 2.5 m in diameter.

Spoiler

Imagine this were 10 t of TNT at 0.4 g.

Edited November 27, 2018 by kerbiloid

[cubinator]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Look how shiny and still not dust covered it is! 

[Green Baron]

The last time it looks like this.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Geoscience background here too :-)

Again, InSight's mission is to tell us about Mars' interior structure and heat flow in the crust.

-----------------

They are assumed to be from impacts on Mars. They show typical signs of originating from the upper mantel and have traces of shock.

Which is useless knowledge as you do not see the details you want from orbit. We have enough remote sensing stuff around which has led to some (more or less founded) guessing and some findings. Now we have detail questions.

Again, you do NOT gain valuable information about conditions at a potential landing site by bombing it and viewing the hole from orbit. That is a misconception, maybe triggered by all the remote sensing from the past.

Your orbiter's resolution is too small to analyse the crater you made with your ICBM. See Schiaparelli impact. Now you have a contaminated spot you want to get rid off before analysing anything.

Forget the bombing. Send the mission right away without any side effects. You get no information from bombing, dig it ;-)

Granted impactors has been used on asteroids, its also an NASA idea for Europa.
Now both has no atmosphere so you can vaporize part of the surface and get spectrograph of the effect, and you can get stardust level samples without landing on Europa. 
No atmosphere also improve accuracy a lot, on Mars you have to park the rover a long way away for it to be safe then drive to the crater. Add that this would take lots of mass, an drill is easier.