It is the year 2096, and you are working on the design of a robotic mission to a

Question

It is the year 2096, and you are working on the design of a robotic mission to a newly discovered planetary system. That system has a central star that is nearly identical to our Sun, and one of the planets has the radius of Venus, a rotational period identical to that of Mars, and lies 1.2 AU from its star. Your spacecraft will orbit but not land on the planet.     (a) Describe briefly the type of geology you would expect it to have. (b) Some of your colleagues believe that the planet has no metallic core. How could you support or refute their hypothesis? (c) Other colleagues suspect that the planet has no atmosphere, but the instruments designed to study the planet’s atmosphere fail because of a software error. However, the spacecraft can still photograph geological features. How could you use these photos to determine whether a significant atmosphere is (or was) present?

Explanation / Answer

a) Based on the above data, The planet is identical to Venus radius. So it is similar to Earth also. Based on the distence it may exists between Earth and Mars if it belongs to Sun system. So the lithology may be identical to inner planets of solar system. So this planet may composed of Silicate minerals and Fe, Ni metallic elements.

b) It may be belongs to inner planet system. So it has high density, so it may has metallic core like Mars and Earth. High densar planets can be existed near to Star. So it can has core.

c) The traces like water flows that repesents sedimentary formation formed by river as deltas, alluvial fans, gradation, sorting and roundness of pebbles or grains. These may be used as traces to identify weather it had water or not at that times based on the photograph.

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