A proposal to search for life on Mars using kinetic penetrators, embedding probes into Martian ice through hard landing. This life-finding mission concept is low-cost and accessible to many private organizations, thus allowing us to send multiple life-finding missions and study Mars’ biosphere prior to human arrival.
Cite as: Spacek, J. (2023) “Interplanetary lawn darts to study extant life in Martian subsurface ice”. Primordial Scoop, e20231017. https://doi.org/10.52400/IIFA7618
NASA and other organizations plan to send humans to Mars before the year 2040. Surprisingly, NASA does not plan to look for extant life on Mars in a way that might yield conclusive results before the planned human landing, even though NASA funded astrobiologists believe that Mars likely holds life (see my previous article for more details).
Determining whether Mars has an active biosphere close to its surface before human arrival has its advantages, some we may still not understand.
Mid-latitude subsurface ice is the best place to search for extant life on Mars. Currently, the preferred strategy to study subsurface ice on Mars is to soft-land a scientific platform. This requires flying the lander with a drill rig and scientific payload, all packed within a heatshield and sky crane or other complex landing apparatus. Each of these parts increases the cost, complexity and total mass of the mission. The added complexity increases the chance of failure and constrains the minimum size of the lift vehicle, resulting in a need for a costly heavy lift rocket.
Here I propose an alternative to this system. The approach is based on a kinetic energy penetrator concept. I propose embedding probes into Martian ice by letting them impact the Martian surface. This approach skips the landing system, drilling, and heatshield making the mission several orders of magnitude less costly.
A feasibility study of this concept mission is yet to be conducted but here are my early thoughts on this project:
I propose a tungsten penetrator to be partially aerobraked to penetrate 2-10 meters deep into the Martian mid-latitude subsurface ice.
The trailing parachute will not be discarded before the hard landing and will serve as an antenna to transmit gathered data after the body of the probe is buried in the Martian ice.
The buried probe will melt the surrounding ice using residual heat stored in the tungsten penetrator after the re-entry. Melting might need to be enhanced with an on-board power source. The melted water will be pumped into the science compartment of the penetrator and analyzed for the presence of extant life. Because the surface of the penetrator was heated during the reentry, it is sterile to the highest possible degree, minimizing the chance of forward contamination and false positives.
Assuming the same pricing for the delivery as for the first of the Morning Star Missions to Venus, a Mars life-searching mission using kinetic penetrators can be conducted for as little as $10 million dollars. The simplicity of the project might allow for multiple Mars ice penetrators to be sent in one batch, allowing us to examine multiple locations at various depths, carrying various instruments.
The $10 million price tag to find alien life on Mars is affordable for many philanthropists and private organizations, ensuring multiple verifications and a chance to study extant life on Mars before we send humans there.
If you want to help develop this concept, please contact alfamars.org.
Afterthought: Few days ago Pete Klupar, Chief Engineer at Breakthrough Prize Foundation, told me that such missions were already flown and pointed towards Deep Space 2 mission. Couple days of research showed me that this idea was out there since at least 1970s. See review [Lorenz, R. D. (2011). Planetary penetrators: Their origins, history and future. Advances in Space Research, 48(3), 403-431.]. Non the less, I believe this idea should be pursued, given we have access to low cost rockets. Many of these probes were already designed and were shown to be feasible. Now it’s time to build them and deploy them en masse.
