by PATRICK LEJTENYI

At a McGill conference on Mars last week, Marc Garneau, the head of the Canadian Space Agency, spoke of Canada's "pragmatic daring" and the unique potential we have in space exploration. NASA's recent successes with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have given rise to optimism among the world's scientific community, not least in Canada, where the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is getting ready to send a bit of maple leaf know-how to the Red Planet.

Our biggest contribution in the short-term is a meteorological station on the Phoenix lander, scheduled for launch in 2007. The static (as opposed to roving) lander is being aimed at Mars' arctic, where the ice concentration is heaviest and only 50 centimetres below the surface. The met station, says Dr. Alain Berinstain, the 35-year-old acting director of the CSA's planetary exploration and space astronomy, will use laser technology to probe the atmosphere, measuring dust disturbances, cloud formations and wind data. After that, he says, the CSA will look at how Canada can lead its own Mars mission.

Exploring the cost

"We have to do a lot of homework to understand the real costs of a Mars mission," says Berinstain. He says the CSA will be issuing a call-out this spring to academics, industry and the scientific community for proposals that would define Canada's mission, slated for 2011. "We're asking for concepts based on certain constraints and cost. It could be anything: an orbiter, a lander, a bunch of tiny landers working in a network. Then we'll take a couple of years to examine which of the three or four we choose would make the best, coolest mission."

With $300-million to work with annually, the CSA operates under a fairly tight budget. The problem, Berinstain admits, is that the money covers its current operating costs but doesn't leave much for new initiatives. He says that the Mars mission could take place as early as 2009, but the two years' grace period allows the agency to spread the cost around that much more.

Still, Canada's vast, frozen emptiness offers a unique playground for Mars-gazing scientists. At 75º N (that's north of Baffin Island), Devon Island has acted as a Martian stand-in for Berinstain and others who want to get an idea of our closest planetary neighbour's surface. Devon - the largest uninhabited island in the world - is windy, barren, very cold and utterly without amenities. Devon's 23-million-year-old Haughton Crater, its rock formations and landscape are all similar to Mars.

Furthermore, given Canada's mining and geological history, we are in an excellent position to use that expertise to adapt tools for use on Mars. Take the CanaDrill, for instance. The 4.8-kilogram electrical dry drill - meaning it needs no lubricant, which is important, as core samples can't be contaminated - can penetrate up to two metres below the Mars surface. While financial setbacks have troubled the project, Berinstain believes that, with the discovery of ice on Mars, subsurface exploration will become an ever-increasing focus for Mars missions.

"Right now, there are two camps when it comes to Mars exploration," he says. "There's atmospheric and surface/subsurface. For the Canadian scientific community, the interest is in getting subsurface a priority, that's where the action is. Right now we can scoop, but that's of limited use because it's so sandy. The bedrock is what's really interesting. We need a drill to take core samples to understand the geology of the site we're at, and that fits into our expertise."

Lifeless, but not boring

While there is a debate as to whether the Martian polar regions' subsurface contains icy dirt or dirty ice, most are agreed that if there is evidence of past life on Mars, that's where it will be found (most Mars experts believe that there isn't any life, even primitive, on the planet, due to intense radiation exposure, but there might have been micro-organisms at some point when liquid water was present).

For all of NASA's success, there remain important limitations. "Spirit and Opportunity are great, but their average surface speed is painfully slow," Berinstain says. Spirit, which has been moving the most, has a top speed of 30 metres a day. But while Berinstain would like to send something smaller and more mobile to Mars in 2011, the risks involved suggest the CSA mission probably won't deviate too far from current technological limits.