Spain’s Martian dreams

Mars, the red planet, is one of the most seductive goals of the international space programme, so it’s not surprising that Spain has plans to become part of the great project to send a capsule to explore and hopefully uncover some of its mysteries.

In partnership with a team of scientists from Finland and Russia, a team from Madrid’s prestigious Complutense University is working on the design of a 135-gram capsule called a magnetometer.

The information that it gathers will be transmitted to space stations in Robledo de Chavela (Madrid) and Cebreros (Avila).

Luis Vázques, Dean of Madrid Complutense, admits that the mission is fraught with difficulties since “the atmosphere is tenuous, changes constantly and calculations usually end up being wrong.”

The magnetometer will be launched into space in 2011 on the Russian rocket, Phobos Sample Return and it is hoped that this mission will help scientists to gain a much more detailed understanding of this fascinating and evocative planet. To date, parts of the planet have been inaccessible due to adverse climatic conditions.

Luis Vásquez claims that 2011’s rocket to Mars is a momentous step which “will help permit future manned flights to Mars, and one to which Spain is making a decisive contribution.”

New post on at Thursday, 17 September, 2009, 7:36 am and is archived in Lifestyle, Places of Interest, Travel. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.