Mariner 9 Television Reconnaissance of Mars and Its Satellites: Preliminary Results

Planetary Protection Knowledge Gap Closure Enabling Crewed Missions to Mars

As focus for exploration of Mars transitions from current robotic explorers to development of crewed missions, it remains important to protect the integrity of scientific investigations at Mars, as well as protect the Earth's biosphere from any potential harmful effects from returned martian material. This is the discipline of planetary protection, and the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) maintains the consensus international policy and guidelines on how this is implemented. Based on National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) studies that began in 2001, COSPAR adopted principles and guidelines for human missions to Mars in 2008. At that point, it was clear that to move from those qualitative provisions, a great deal of work and interaction with spacecraft designers would be necessary to generate meaningful quantitative recommendations that could embody the intent of the Outer Space Treaty (Article IX) in the design of such missions. Beginning in 2016, COSPAR then sponsored a multiyear interdisciplinary meeting series to address planetary protection "knowledge gaps" (KGs) with the intent of adapting and extending the current robotic mission-focused Planetary Protection Policy to support the design and implementation of crewed and hybrid exploration missions. This article describes the outcome of the interdisciplinary COSPAR meeting series, to describe and address these KGs, as well as identify potential paths to gap closure. It includes the background scientific basis for each topic area and knowledge updates since the meeting series ended. In particular, credible solutions for KG closure are described for the three topic areas of (1) microbial monitoring of spacecraft and crew health; (2) natural transport (and survival) of terrestrial microbial contamination at Mars, and (3) the technology and operation of spacecraft systems for contamination control. The article includes a KG data table on these topic areas, which is intended to be a point of departure for making future progress in developing an end-to-end planetary protection requirements implementation solution for a crewed mission to Mars. Overall, the workshop series has provided evidence of the feasibility of planetary protection implementation for a crewed Mars mission, given (1) the establishment of needed zoning, emission, transport, and survival parameters for terrestrial biological contamination and (2) the creation of an accepted risk-based compliance approach for adoption by spacefaring actors including national space agencies and commercial/nongovernment organizations.

Solar radiation incident on the Martian surface

Calculations indicate that the maximum daily solar radiation reaching the Martian surface is about 325 cal/cm2 during southern hemisphere summer at latitude of about 40 degrees S. In the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, the radiation reaching the surface at wavelengths greater than 2800 A is within 10% of the radiation incident on the atmosphere. There is significant extinction of radiation in the spectral region near 2500 A in mid and high latitudes due to adsorption of radiation by ozone; radiation reaching the surface may be reduced to one one-thousandth of that incident on the atmosphere during winter. Virtually no radiation of wavelengths less than 1900 A reaches the surface because of absorption by the large column abundance of carbon dioxide. Daily and latitudinal distributions of radiation are presented for wavelengths of 3000, 2500 and 2000 A.

Wind Tunnel Simulations of Light and Dark Streaks on Mars

Wind tunnel experiments have revealed a characteristic flow field pattern over raised-rim craters which causes distinctive zones of aeolian erosion and deposition. Comparisons of the results with Mariner 9 images of Mars show that some crater-associated dark zones result from wind erosion and that some crater-associated light streaks are depositional.

Polar Wandering on Mars?

Polar wandering during the past 10(8) years may be recorded by unique quasi-circular structures in the polar regions of Mars. Polar wandering on Mars is likely if deep convection is involved in the origin of the very large constructional volcanic features located near the equator. The magnitude of the nonhydrostatic low order components of the gravity field and their correlation with the equatorial volcanic features may be additional evidence of deep convection and associated polar wandering.

Detection of Molecular Oxygen on Mars

Molecular oxygen was detected in martian spectra near 7635 angstroms and its abundance measured both during and after the 1971 dust storm. Its column abundance in the clear martian atmosphere is about 10.4 +/- 1.0 centimeters amagat, giving a mixing ratio of molecular oxygen to carbon dioxide of 1.3 x 10-(3). The mixing ratio of molecular oxygen to carbon monoxide (1.4 +/- 0.3) is quite different from the value of 0.5 that would result from the photolysis of a pure carbon dioxide atmosphere, which indicates that there is or was a net source of oxygen relative to carbon (probably water) in the martian atmosphere.