In the hunt for life on Mars, it's time to pull out the heavy artillery. A non-profit group has proposed a mission that involves showering Mars with bunker-busting missiles that would penetrate deep into the ground but deliver probes, not warheads.
On Mars, preserved traces of microbes could lurk in deep subsurface ice, where they would be shielded from harsh cosmic radiation. NASA's Curiosity rover has a drill, but it only penetrates a few centimetres. "Curiosity doesn't go very deep – it is literally scratching the surface," says Chris Carberry, executive director of the non-profit group Explore Mars, based in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Future missions will go deeper but will have limited capabilities. NASA's InSight lander mission, set for 2016, features a "mole" designed to dig down 5 metres, but it won't be searching for life. The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover, due to launch in 2018, will drill down 2 metres in search of traces of life, but it can only explore a single Martian region.
That's why Explore Mars last week appealed for funds for a project called Exolance, which would scatter small, lightweight projectiles across the Red Planet. Each missile would carry scientific instruments and would keep in radio contact with Earth.
If you can't finess something out, shoot a missile at it? To read more, click here.