Sure, I'd love to see Cores from Mars. (Dibs on that as a SF title.) But really, the challenges are pretty daunting. Nicks right, how deep is deep? Especially since the deeper you go, the heavier the sample, which is important if you want to send it back here for study. And the wider the core, the more it weighs, natch, but the less it shows.
Suppose you drill ten feet down. For one inch core, that is going to be several pounds of rock. If you can only send back half that weight, how do you cut it in half, knowing that each cut, no matter the orientation, loses information?
Drilling hardrock on earth requires water. An auger can only go so deep in softer rock, but will not provide a core, only chips of the pulverized rock. Still usefull, sure, but not intact core.
Me, I'd rather see more advanced rovers than sample return. Something that can make a thin-section, perhaps, with a polarizing transmitted light microscope? A seismic line of geophones?
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Core Samples
Sure, I'd love to see Cores from Mars. (Dibs on that as a SF title.) But really, the challenges are pretty daunting. Nicks right, how deep is deep? Especially since the deeper you go, the heavier the sample, which is important if you want to send it back here for study. And the wider the core, the more it weighs, natch, but the less it shows.
Suppose you drill ten feet down. For one inch core, that is going to be several pounds of rock. If you can only send back half that weight, how do you cut it in half, knowing that each cut, no matter the orientation, loses information?
Drilling hardrock on earth requires water. An auger can only go so deep in softer rock, but will not provide a core, only chips of the pulverized rock. Still usefull, sure, but not intact core.
Me, I'd rather see more advanced rovers than sample return. Something that can make a thin-section, perhaps, with a polarizing transmitted light microscope? A seismic line of geophones?