http:\/\/exploration.esa.int\/mars\/53462-call-for-exomars-2018-landing-site-selection\/<\/a><\/p>\nI am one of the people on a European Space Agency led group who will scrutinise the sites for their suitability for ExoMars.\u00a0 Other people from the MSL team are also on this group and we will use the experience we have gained with Curiosity.<\/p>\n
One of the key things we\u00a0are learning from MSL is about the importance of drilling and the preservation of organics in relation to the surrounding terrain.\u00a0 ExoMars\u00a0should be able to drill down to 2 m depth, helping our chances of avoiding the full effects of radiation from solar and galactic sources.\u00a0 However, results from Curiosity also show the likely importance of identifying sampling sites which have been protected by overlying rocks for most of their history, with only relatively recent exposure by wind erosion on the martian surface.\u00a0 This has been determined in\u00a0the Science paper by Ken Farley et al. (In Situ Radiometric and Exposure Age Dating of the Martian Surface), who\u00a0studied the abundances of isotopes determined by SAM, including 3He which\u00a0is formed by exposure to cosmic radiation.\u00a0 Most helium, He has an atomic weight of 4.\u00a0 They conclude that some terrains were exposed by erosion, less than 100 million years ago.\u00a0 This sort of information will help guide our future exploration of Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The landing site slection process for the 2018 ExoMars Rover has just started: http:\/\/exploration.esa.int\/mars\/53462-call-for-exomars-2018-landing-site-selection\/ I am one of the people on a European Space Agency led group who will scrutinise the sites for their suitability for ExoMars.\u00a0 Other people from the MSL team are also on this group and we will use the experience we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}