Sahara campaign for field testing of Mars exploration instruments for 2001-2005 mission rovers

On July 4, 1997, NASA's Mars Pathfinder landed safely on the surface of the red planet, the first spacecraft to do so in 21 years. After this success, Mars exploration is a high priority program in the United States. There is a plan for testing instruments for a Mars Rover to be launched in the time period 2001-2005 in the Western Desert of Egypt. It is the driest Sahara in the world, and contains a variety of rocks and soil deposited by catastrophic floods early in the history as that occurred in the past history of Mars. Beside, dust storms for 50 scattered days during the year “El-Kamassen” similar to the dust storms in Mars. With The Planetary Society (TPS) in Pasadena, USA, currently, the authors are considering bringing a group of about twelve scientists, 5 from the United States (NASA-J PL), 3 from Russia (IKI), 1 from European Space Agency (ESA) and 3 from Egypt, to do Mars instruments testing in the very dry region of the Western Desert, at three different sites chosen by their analog with Martian desert-like conditions, and contain subsurface water at different depths. The instruments to be tested will be electromagnetic sounder, magnetic coil, infra red spectrometer, radiometer, coordination and GPS Navigation. The exception duration for testing is the Autumn of 1999