Conference – Day Two
The conference got underway proper today. After some introductory remarks from Pascal Lee, Steven Dick, NASA’s Chief Historian, kicked off proceedings with a presentation about the discovery of Phobos and Deimos. It was really interesting and provided a good introduction and set the scene well for the rest of the conference. The rest of the morning consisted of several science presentations that discussed things such as the conundrums about the surfaces of the moons, what is known about their composition, their origin and evolution and Phobos and Deimos’ interactions with the solar wind. After these talks I got a real sense of how little we know about these two objects and the need for more data and more spacecraft exploring them.
Over lunch the Director of NASA Ames, Pete Worden, gave a keynote address about how human exploration of Phobos and Deimos could fit into NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration. He suggested that sending a manned mission to Phobos or Deimos may be possible, post the return to the Moon. This suggestion, which he clarified was far from NASA policy, was based on a recent study into using the Crew Exploration Vehicle mission architecture for a human mission to a Near Earth Object, such as an asteroid and the similarities between these type of missions.
The afternoon session was on the robotic reconnaissance of Phobos and Deimos. There were presentations on the recent observations by the HRSC instrument on Mars Express and the CRISM instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which are both in orbit around Mars. Dr Zakharov also gave a presentation about the upcoming Phobos-Soil mission that the Russian Space Agency hopes to launch in 2009. It is an extremely complex mission with a very large spacecraft and lots of instrumentation. If every part of the mission is successful it will be fantastic and should deliver about 20 grams of Phobos’ regolith back to Earth in 2012.
Bob Richards from Optech in Canada talked about the PRIME mission study that I was involved with and Dr Andrew Ball from the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, talked about the various mission proposals that had been undertaken in Europe in the past decade or so. This included the MPAD-S study and a Deimos Sample Return mission proposed through ESA’s Aurora programme. Andrew also talked about some work being done on the origin of Phobos’ grooves by one of his colleagues at the Open University, John Murray. I had actually paid Andrew a visit at Milton Keynes when I visited London back in July 2006 so it was great to see him again. When visited Andrew was kind enough to give me a tour of the Planetary & Space Sciences Research Institute including the clean rooms where the Beagle 2 spacecraft was constructed and what would have been the science team’s mission control room had Beagle 2 landed successfully on Mars. There was also a few presentations about the Phobos-LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) which is being built by the Planetary Society and will fly aboard the Phobos-Soil mission.
After proceedings, some of us heading to a Chinese restaurant in Mountain View for a casual dinner. We jokingly discussed the formation of a Phobos & Deimos Society whose principal aim is to determine the correct pronunciation of the moon’s names and the correct phrase for their inhabitants. Leave a comment with your suggestions 
