Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the LGO, MAO, and NEAR Missions Letter Report (1986) / Chapter Skim
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. The Committee plans to make further assessments during the development periods of these missions leading to launch, and at these times will consider the critical matter of measurement capabilities of the selected instrumental packages in the science payloads, as they relate to the measurement requirements specified in the relevant COMPLEX strategy reports.
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Mission The COMPLEX report "Strategy for Exploration of the Inner Planets: 1977 1987" defines the measurement of the morphologic, physical, and chemical character of Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon on a global scale as a broad exploration objective of high general scientific importance, and basic to all planetological studies. Within this general objective, COMPLEX recommended that the major thrust of inner solar system exploration in this decade should focus on Earth, Mars, and Venus, with the goal of understanding the present state and evolution of terrestrial planets with atmospheres.
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Both Mars observer and Mars Aeronomy Observer, which fall in this class, will do excellent science, but do not address the high priority scientific objectives for Mars involving intensive study of local areas of the planet via in situ studies, and detailed planning, at least, for the return of martian material. These will necessarily continue to be the first-order science objectives in the next decadal strategy for martian exploration.
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COMPLEX noted that a full response to these science objectives requires rendezvous-type investigations of several selected asteroids. ASSESSMENT OF THE CANDIDATE OBSERVER MISSIONS This section comments on the degree to which the recommendations of the relevant COMPLEX strategy reports are followed by the more general elements of the candidate Planetary observer missions -- their rationales, science objectives, general strategies, and timeliness.
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Mission The Committee finds that the candidate LGO mission is in total accord with the COMPLEX decadal strategy for continued lunar exploration. All of the science objectives identified by COMPLEX in the 1977 strategy report-primary, secondary, and at each level of priority -- are fully addressed by the proposed suite of multidisciplinary measurements, excepting only those aspects of local chemical and mineralogical measurements (isotopic age determinations, high precision petrochemical analysis, and petrographic study)
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Future NEAR science payload studies will define more clearly the limits of accuracy expected on elemental and mineral abundances: the COMPLEX strategy calls for principal asteroidal elements to be measured ultimately to 0.5 atom percent accuracy, and major mineral concentrations to within a factor of 2. A magnetometer, considered at present to be a possible valuable augmentation of the straw-man NEAR payload, would be needed to meet the COMPLEX recommendation of measuring global or local remanence to a level of a few gammas.
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Ground-based observations have grouped asteroids into distinct spectral classes, probably related to the several petrologic classes of meteorites, but the cross-calibration between the two sets of objects remains unknown. A timely asteroid rendezvous mission of the NEAR type to an object of known spectral class would be a major advance in clarifying the nature of one class and allowing a start on connecting meteorite and spectral classes.
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