Science / Medicine : Probe Provides New Mars Data

A Soviet space probe crippled by a computer glitch survived long enough to beam “new and important” information back to Earth about Mars and one of the Red Planet’s moons, researchers reported last week. While analysis of the data is still preliminary, early interpretations provide new clues about the atmosphere surrounding Mars and evidence supporting controversial theories the moon Phobos may have once been an asteroid.

“Phobos project did return new and important scientific data,” wrote Mark Saunders of the Imperial College in London in an article published in the British scientific journal Nature.

The Soviets launched two space probes, Phobos 1 and Phobos 2, in July, 1988, to study Mars and Phobos, one of its moons. Phobos 1 was lost before reaching Mars, but Phobos 2 managed to orbit Mars for 57 days before it also failed.

In 15 preliminary research papers published in Nature, researchers from the Soviet Union and other countries described the preliminary analysis of a range of information collected about the two bodies before Phobos 2 was lost.

The data indicates that Mars has little or no magnetic field of its own but that the Martian atmosphere may be more complicated than had been thought and may be similar in some ways to Earth’s, the researchers reported. There is also a variety of evidence supporting theories Phobos was once a so-called carbonaceous asteroid that was somehow captured into orbiting Mars, the researchers said.