WHY A NETWORK?

The NETLANDER mission presents the originality to propose a study of Mars geophysical and meteorological phenomena, not at a local scale (as do the nowaday landers) but at the planet's global scale.

This mission is mainly oriented toward the installation of a "network" enabling the realisation of simultaneous measurements of the same phenomenon in different places. For example, the sismometry experiment, should enable to localise the origine of a seism by triangulation of signals recorded by three stations.

Other experiments, named "multi-sites", should be realised independantly on each station, but will benefit from being conducted in different places on the planet with distinctive features.

This first martian network is constituted of four identical stations installed in appropriate locations on the planet (see network formation). The scientific payload is composed of nine instruments.

Dust storm on Mars seen by Hubble

The main domains studied by this mission on Mars planet are :

Characterisation of the planet structure (core, mantle and crust),
Evaluation of the seismic activity (surface tectonic),
Determination of the presence of subsurface water reservoirs,
Study of the magnetic field on the surface and determination of its origine and its evolutions,
Study of the ionosphere and its interaction with the surface,
Improvement of our understanding of climatic and meteorological mechanisms,
Characterisation of the electric phenomena in the atmosphere and their local influence,
Geodesy (precession, nutation, evolution of the obliquity, ...),
Local geology (mineralogy, morphology), study of superfical processes (erosion, dust sedimentation, frost formation, ...) and characterisation of thermo-mechanical properties of the regolith.

Map of the simulated seismicity of Mars from MOLA and Mars Express data © IPGP/DGSP