[meteorite-list] Kiowa Co. used as substitute for Mars

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Oct 15 13:53:48 2006
Message-ID: <qat4j2ds1rebmtgbrjficu7oma2h6n7oot_at_4ax.com>

http://www.hutchnews.com/news/regional/stories/kiowa101406.shtml

Kiowa Co. used as substitute for Mars

By Tim Vandenack

The Hutchinson News

tvandenack_at_hutchnews.com

Essam Heggy took a few steps, peering into the screen of a blue gadget cradled
in his arms, while Buster Wilson shuffled a few feet ahead, dragging an orange
box along the ground.


"Oh, stop," Heggy said, adjusting something on his device. "Now let's move it in
another track."

They shifted a couple feet over and started anew on an adjacent plot of dirt.
Wilson again pulled the orange box, actually an antenna transmitting waves into
the soil below. Heggy, meanwhile, monitored the blue appliance, which offered a
rough physical depiction of what the waves were running into under the ground.

The scene, which took place Friday, was in Kiowa County, but it's a dress
rehearsal for Mars. Heggy, a planetary scientist with the NASA-funded Lunar
Planetary Institute in Houston, is in Kiowa County with a team to test the
device, a ground-penetrating radar, for its planned use on a rover set to go to
the Red Planet in 2011.

It's a fitting location. The rural farmland that Heggy worked Friday is the site
of the Brenham meteorite fall, which occurred perhaps 2,000 years ago, leaving
space rocks scattered all over the area. Indeed, he's looking for such stones,
assisted by Steve Arnold, the meteor hunter who found a 1,430-pound specimen in
Kiowa County last year.

But beyond rocks, Heggy's real aim is to fine-tune the device so it can
ultimately be used to help search for water beneath the Martian surface.
Already, the gadget has been to the southwestern United States and Africa's
Sahara Desert, also for fine-tuning.

'Part of the hunt'

On this day, Heggy, who was to be joined by a contingent from the Houston Museum
of Natural Science, didn't make any definitive finds. Searching the spot that
Arnold had earlier pinpointed as the possible location of a meteor, he
determined that something was there. He just wasn't sure what, at least not
after the preliminary perusal.

"It could be a meteorite, it could be something else," Heggy said. "That's part
of the hunt."

Whatever the case, he wasn't dissuaded. It's still early. And Arnold remains
hopeful that the high-tech gadgetry will yield something before the scientist
heads back to Texas next week.

"We've got a big signal out here," Arnold said.

Even before Heggy arrived, Arnold had dragged his oversized metal detector,
pulled by a four-wheeler, over a large swath of farmer Allen Binford's land,
placing red flags here and there where Heggy ought to check. Depending on what
the ground-penetrating radar finds, digging will start Monday, maybe Sunday.

But is a record-busting stone in the offing? The 1,430-pound monster, which
Arnold would like to place in a public arena, is the fourth largest of its type
ever found on Earth.

"Maybe, maybe not," he said.

Either way, Arnold will stick around, even after Heggy leaves. He's already been
searching Kiowa County soil, on and off, for a year and plans to keep it up for
another year, dashing over farmland in his four-wheeler, listening for the siren
sound of his metal detector that indicates a stone-and-iron pallasite may be
below.

"I love it," said the Kingston, Ark.-based Arnold, who has also uncovered a
350-pound rock during his Kiowa County stint. "The thrill and acquiring new
things, new specimens. Bigger, better, more."

The European Space Agency, with which NASA cooperates, is set to launch the Mars
rover that'll carry the ground-penetrating radar. Similar devices have been used
from Mars' orbit, but this will be the first time such a device is placed on the
surface of the planet - and it'll offer a clearer picture.
Received on Sun 15 Oct 2006 01:53:45 PM PDT