Mars landing on minds of visiting geologists
Conference discusses sites suitable for Surveyor rover

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor

What does Niagara Falls have in common with the planet Mars? Quite a lot, geologically speaking. In fact, tomorrow and Saturday, a group of leading planetary geologists will visit the Falls to better understand the geology of Mars. They have been attending a conference on Mars landing sites for the 2001 Surveyor mission, as well as the 1999 Planetary Geological Mappers meeting, both hosted by UB.

At the Mars meeting, geologists have been discussing possible landing sites for the Surveyor rover, which in Fall 2001 will carry experiments designed to demonstrate technologies necessary to support eventual human colonization of the red planet, according to Tracy Gregg, UB assistant professor of geology and a member of the workshop organizing committee.

"For example, will we be able to extract useful materials, such as construction supplies and metal ores, from Martian rocks?" she asked. "And can we extract oxygen from the soils?"

The mission also will include experiments to help determine the composition of Martian rocks, the results of which will assist scientists in understanding the evolution of Mars, as well as determine if the planet has materials that can be mined to support communities there.

Studded with giant craters and huge volcanoes, the Mars surface is a tough place to land anything, especially a remote-controlled vehicle equipped with tens of millions of dollars of equipment and sensitive scientific instruments.

Gregg noted that while searching for evidence of life on Mars is always important, the Surveyor, which has a range of about 2 miles, or 3 kilometers, can land safely only in certain places.

"Most of the places available for safe landings are not optimum places to search for Martian life," she explained. "Instead, we are trying to maximize the science return; in other words, to find a place that will give us the greatest access to the widest variety of different types of rocks in a small space."

At the meeting, which concluded yesterday, Gregg and volcanologist Mark Bulmer of the Smithsonian Institution explained how their experience exploring undersea volcanoes using a remote-controlled vehicle may be relevant to missions on Mars.

The Planetary Geological Mappers meeting included presentations of geological-mapping studies and discussion of planetary geological-mapping procedures and issues.

The scientists will continue their work tomorrow when they don hiking boots and embark on field trips in and around Western New York, courtesy of their UB hosts. "The reason for the field trips is that there is some controversy over whether or not glaciers may have existed in the past on Mars," Gregg explained. "So we'll be showing these geologists who specialize in Mars what glaciated terrain and glacial deposits really look like."