Choosing a Landing Site-Part II
The next landing on Mars will be the University of Arizona’s Phoenix mission, important because it will be the first of a line of “Scout” missions to the red planet, Mars. Originally planned as part of the 2001 Mars Surveyor Program, the loss of both the Mars Climate Orbiter along with the Mars Polar Lander caused for drastic changes in the NASA program. This included the cancellation of the 2001 lander mission, and indefinite postponements of the missions which would return samples back to Earth at that time.
This is not the first time the Phoenix has risen its head for NASA and science. Going back as far as a decade–to the Mars Pathfinder, the failed Mars Polar Lander, and involved with the discovery by the Mars Odyssey of ice–now the Phoenix will be led by the University of Arizona, called the Phoenix Mars Mission. According to NASA, this coming August the famous Phoenix will also lead NASA’s Scout Program, which are “highly-innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions,” as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. As history so often repeats itself, the man who was Lockheed Martin’s chief engineer for the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, Ed Sedivy, is also leading the Lockheed Martin engineering team in the major phases of the development of the Phoenix spacecraft.
If everything turns out all right, the spacecraft will land on Mars in May of 2008. The area chosen to land on Mars by the Phoenix will be next to a water-ice-rich northern polar region. Once landed, a lander will be deployed to dig with a robotic arm into the Mars’ surface in order to search for clues about the Martian history of water, also to find out if there are any suitable environments that harbor life examples of microbes. Mars has been considered a top priority for a long time, in order to search for life on another planet, and this mission’s main purpose is to recognize that the “signature of path or present life on other worlds” may be present.
A major breakthrough for the Scout Missions are its major strengths as a collaborative approach for space exploration. NASA reports legacy and innovation are at the base of true partnership: government, academia, and industry. To achieve this process, a scientist by the name of Peter Smith will be responsible for all aspects of the mission.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, The Gear to Get There. 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.
