TEREX-1: A micro-satellite terahertz lander for the exploration of water/oxygen resources on Mars
Abstract
Mars is expected to be a target of resource exploration and immigration for business in a decade or two, next to Moon. In the human activities on Mars, water and oxygen would be main resources as they may be the materials of hydrogen energy and life-support, so the exploration and securement of them would be important. In this context, making the frequent opportunities to send spacecrafts to Mars to get the information of their distributions is indispensable, and the use of low-cost micro-satellites would extremely help that. We are developing a micro-satellite Mars lander with a terahertz spectrometer onboard, named TEREX-1 (the 1st TERahertz EXplorer). A terahertz spectrometer can be made very small and lightweight (several kilograms) with a high-frequency heterodyne spectroscopic system, covering the wavelength range in which the simultaneous detection of H$ _{2}$O, O$ _{2}$, H$ _{2}$O$ _{2}$ and O$ _{3}$ are possible with high sensitivities. TEREX-1 is planned to be launched as a piggyback payload in mid-2020s, costing 10-20M US-dollars which is less than 1/10 of previous Mars missions. We are also planning the following TEREX-2 as a Mars orbiter, intending TEREX to be a micro-satellite mission series. In addition, O$ _{2}$ on Mars is a hot target also in the astrobiological aspect, as new findings about the mixing ratios and their variability near the surface have been reported (Hartogh et al., 2010, A&A; Trainer et al., 2019, JGR Planets). In the presentation the mission and observational plans of TEREX-1 for both the economic and scientific benefits will be discussed.
- Publication:
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43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 28 January - 4 February
- Pub Date:
- January 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021cosp...43E.223K