NASA and the Phoenix—Questioning their Future
“We did a drop test nearly a year ago to test for radar performance and radar performance was not adequate for our mission,” Peter Smith, the University of Arizona principle investigator for the Mars Phoenix Lander mission, said Jan. 9 during a presentation at the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group Meeting here.
With the Martian sky slowly beginning to brighten for the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, after more than a month of darkness, the NASA Phoenix is heading toward the two rovers’ planet that not to long ago was covered with red dust. Having left Earth on August 4, 2007, aboard the Delta II space launch system, it was a beginning step for Phoenix’s 10-month cruise to the red planet of Mars. We all know that the mission was successful, and the Phoenix is on its way to Mars to check for life.
. . . ah, but what then?
It has been reported that the Delta II will be phased out toward the end of this decade due to serious money problems (presently 65 million per launch), with NASA shifting its launching of the Delta II’s payload class to the Atlas 5 or Delta 4 vehicles—based on an increase of bids of 120-130 million per launching. This is for the year 2010 for the Delta II’s launchings.
The purpose of the present Phoenix mission is to dig into the Martian soil and water-ice, looking for some sort of proof for past habitation on Mars. As important as the mission is for future colonization, it almost did not get off the ground due to financial issues. These issues were mainly due to serious setbacks which required more modifications to its commercially purchased radar altimeter, and also the questioning of the quality of the Martian landing site that the Phoenix was planning on using. In fact—truth be known, last fall the future of the Phoenix was not looking too good.
According to Space News, the Mars Phoenix Lander was originally chosen as a “competitively selected” planned series of the Mars Scout missions. Hardware that was chosen was the same as the failed 1998 Mars Polar Lander, in addition to a radar altimeter used in commercial aviation. But according to Space News, to transfer the altimeter over to the Phoenix was going to require more software and firmware modifications for use as a spacecraft landing radar. When diagnosed and fixed, the budgeted Phoenix that originally was to cost $325 million dollars, ended up with a price tag of $386 million dollars, and it is still unknown whether or not the latest cost overruns were included in it.
But anyway, the launching of the Phoenix was a success, and is on its way to Mars. Right?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 6:42 am and is filed under Mission History, Mission Objectives, Public Relations, Technical Concerns, 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.
