Update on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander—Part II
“Landing safely on Mars is difficult no matter what method you use,” said Barry Goldstein, the project manager for Phoenix at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Our team has been testing the system relentlessly since 2003 to identify and address whatever vulnerabilities may exist.”
To continue on from our last Odyssey article about the NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, a three-month spring and summer mission on Mars is being planned for the lander’s landing and mission. To monitor the Martian weather, a meteorology station will be built, with the use of a laser for assessing water and atmospheric Martian dust. Advanced tools for the Mars Lander that are the most advanced technology ever sent to Mars include “a mast-mounted stereo camera in order to survey the landing site, a descent camera to see the site in broader context and two microscopes.”
According to NASA, other highly advanced equipment for the final landing stage of the Phoenix is a pulsed thruster method of deceleration, whose system uses an ultra-lightweight landing system—allowing the spacecraft to carry a much larger scientific payload. One thing that has not changed is the use of a heat shield to slow the Phoenix’s high-speed entry, which then is followed by a supersonic parachute that further reduces its speed down to 135 mph. Separation follows from the parachute, with the lander firing pulsed descent rocket engines to approximately 5.5 mph—followed by landing on its three legs. Landing on the planet Mars is a field in itself—with Mars considered by many to be a combination of Earth and the moon, with a very thin atmosphere. Techniques are combined, such as aerobraking to slow down enough to reach the Martian surface, or with wings or rockets used to land safely.
What is hard is the ability to land in a safe spot on Mars and still achieve the mission’s goals. The spot for the Phoenix is a broad valley as smooth as possible and as few boulders as can be found, equivalent to the latitude of northern Alaska. On NASA’s leading list is Peter Smith, the Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson; project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and the development partnership located at Lockheed Martin, Denver. Also teamed up is the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, the Pax Planck Institute, Germany, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 6:45 am and is filed under Mission Objectives. 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.
