Ifikratis from Athens: Are there any concerns for the deploying of the SHARAD radar as there were for the Mars Express MARSIS?
Also, I would like to know if the SHARAD would be better in terms of depth and quality measurements than the Mars Express Orbiter.
Okay. Well, the two instruments are both built by the Italian Space Agency, and there are many overlapping aspects of the design.
The main difference is the frequency. The SHARAD antenna on our mission is shorter frequency and the MARSIS antenna is longer frequency.
So, what that means is we have a shorter antenna, it's about 30 feet in total length. They have a considerably longer antenna,
and they also have, they actually have three parts to the antenna. Ours deploys in two pieces; theirs actually deploys in three pieces.
So, as they've learned about the deployment of the MARSIS antenna, we've learned about our deployment,
as well, because the design is similar, but not exactly the same.
So, we've done testing that shows us that we will not have the same kind of concerns as they did with the MARSIS antenna,
and we've also, you know, we've learned things about how we can better deploy our antenna as a result of the testing they've done for MARSIS.
So it's really been very complementary.
What was the other thing, it was deployment and what was the other part?
Quality of depth.
Oh, okay. Okay. So, because they have different frequencies, that means that they will penetrate to different depths.
The MARSIS antenna will penetrate to two to three kilometers. Ours will penetrate to about a kilometer, which is about half a mile.
So theirs goes over a mile, ours goes about a mile into the surface. Sorry, about half a mile into the surface.
Theirs goes over a mile. And because the frequency of our antenna is shorter, it means that we have better resolution.
We should be able to see layers that are small as about 30 feet in thickness.
Their resolution is considerably less than that because they're looking further into the surface. So, you know, as they take data and find
interesting subsurface features, we'll also go back and look at those areas and see if we see smaller-scale features in the same area.