Posted by jburk to Mars Express at July 16, 2004 11:01 PM

People at NASA never cease to surprise me. Searching for water or presence of past life of Mars obviously needs drilling beneath the surface. So NASA is developing the Mars Underground Mole (MUM), based on a previous device used for the European Beagle 2 mission. But here is the twist. MUM will include sensors which were previously used to collect spectral imagery of Earth from pilotless aircrafts, especially Hawaii, according to NASA. While the Mole will stay on the surface on Mars and drill up to 5 meters deep, it will transmit data via a fiber optic cable to a digital array scanning interferometer (DASI). And the spectral images produced by the DASI will enable researchers to identify possible water, ice, organics and minerals under the surface on Mars.