A Mars Odyssey

As part of the reconnaissance missions that have greatly increased understanding of Mars, the Phoenix mission developed and designed by the University of Arizona in Tucson, is back on track. In a termination review meeting on January 26th, NASA scrutinized the $31 million extra dollars the 5 month mission requires for ground control expenses. This brings the total budget for the project well past the $325 million granted in 2005. In what was likely a shoe-in given the money already spent, NASA gave the project its blessing at the new price.The now nearly $400 million dollar robotic probe, constructed in Colorado by Lockheed-Martin and overseen by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has experienced significant delays. Firstly, delays in selecting an appropriate landing site to begin digging for signs of water and life have occurred since the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter discovered the site chosen was littered with potentially damaging boulders in late November 2006. Since then, the choice has been narrowed down to three finalists in the northern latitudes. It is expected the winning site will be chosen in March 2007, just 5 months from the expected August launch.

Also, nearly 6 months were lost finding a workable solution to a faulty altimeter inherited from the doomed Mars Polar Lander (MPL) before it was determined to be the likely cause of the 1999 accident. A software patch was created for the F-16 fighters the design came from, but it wasn’t compatible with the existing Phoenix software. This effort to save a few million dollars resulted in several million being spent on a work-around. That is, of course, better than loosing yet another Martian probe in a deadly hard landing.

The data gathered by the Phoenix probe will be part of the invaluable reconnaissance provided by unmanned missions before the Constellation Program lands on Mars in what is hoped to be the early 2020s. Phoenix will carry updated versions of the instruments destroyed when MPL crashed including those testing for life by adding water and cooking scooped up soil samples. Of particular interest to researchers is the stability of the Martian terrain, possible hydrological considerations and the outside chance of there being native life on the otherwise barren planet. Climate researches on Earth are also anxious to find clues to what happened to the Martian atmosphere, hopefully to avoid repeating it here.

Who says space missions can’t solve Earthly problems?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 1:50 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.