Phoenix Digging Away in Martian Wonderland
The Martian area by the name of “Wonderland” received the attention of the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander on Tuesday, which began digging by taking its first scoop of soil from the NASA called “national park” regions which the mission scientists have been preserving for science.
The test trench, “Snow White” was created by the robotic arm of the Phoenix on June 17 or the 22nd sol Martian day, not quite a month after landing on May 25th. By the 19th, the activities will resume as presently Phoenix engineers are looking into how successful the Phoenix can handle large amounts of data. So far, the hard white material similar to the first trench dug is causing the robotic arm some major problems, but the scientists have been expecting it –which is why the Phoenix is now digging into the Snow White trench near the polygon named “Cheshire Cat”—predicted for more soil layers and thicker soil above this white material. This soil structure is being examined, in order to decide at what depths are needed in order to collect samples from future trenches near the polygon’s cente.
The $420 million dollar mission of the Phoenix Mars Mission is in control of the powerful team of the University of Arizona, the first university ever to be offered complete control of a NASA mission with full NASA budget. The Phoenix mission is the first in NASA’s Scout Program, led by the scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, developed to study the history of water and habitability potential in the ice-rich soil of Mars’s artic. Three divisions are involved with the Phoenix Mission – the PI at the University of Arizona, the project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the flight system manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems (LMSS). The retrieved data will hopefully provide answers to questions such as:
• Will the Martian arctic support life
• What is the history of water at the landing site
• How is the Martian climate affected by polar dynamics
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 1:55 am and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News, Technical Concerns. 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.
