Mitrofanov

Mitrofanov Offers Second Briefing to Institute: Mars Odyssey Discovers Abundant Water Just Below Martian Surface

 

Map of neutron emission from Mars indicating vast quantities of water (blue).

MOSCOW, June 1, 2002 -- In March of this year, Dr. Igor Mitrofanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute (IKI) briefed project personnel at the Eisenhower Institute on the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft and the role that IKI has played in the project. Today, he met with Institute personnel, who were in Russia doing work on the Institute project, Ten Years Later: Assessing US-Russian Engagement in Space, once again to brief them on Odyssey's latest findings. Dr. Mitrofanov explained that Odyssey had confirmed scientists' initial findings that enormous quantities of buried water lie just under the surface of Mars-possibly enough water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over.

In March, Dr. Mitrofanov had explained to Institute personnel the nature of cooperation that had taken place between US and Russian scientists on Odyssey. The team at IKI had designed and built a High Energy Neutron Detector (HEND) that American scientists from the University of Arizona had integrated aboard the Odyssey as part of the so-called gamma ray spectrometer suite.

The gamma ray spectrometer suite is a unique set of instruments designed for Odyssey's primary science mission, which involves sensing the sub-surface composition of Mars to depths as great as one meter. Early information from Odyssey suggested the presence of water below the surface of Mars, but the vast quantity of data being returned from the HEND warranted further analysis. On May 30, scientists announced that their early findings have been confirmed based on the extensive statistical analysis that had taken place (see spectrometer data image).

During the briefing in Moscow at IKI, Dr. Mitrofanov commented: "This is very exciting. We have a lot of data suggesting that there is more water ice below the surface of Mars than we had previously thought might exist. We will keep looking at this data to determine what our next steps might be." Odyssey's primary science mission will continue through August 2004, and the spacecraft will also serve as a communications relay for US and international spacecraft scheduled to arrive at Mars in 2003 and 2004.