Phoenix Headed for Martian North Pole in 2007

jschuur writes "After narrowing down the selections to 4 finalists, NASA has chosen the Phoenix Mars lander design for its 2007 Scout Mission to the planet Mars. Phoenix, a joint project between the University of Arizona and Planetary Laboratory was designed after the doomed 1999 Mars Polar Lander and recycles much of its design and instrument ideas. A staggering $325 million grant was awarded to the University of Arizona for the project, which will also include Canadian participation. Phoenix is scheduled to land on Mars in May of 2008."

Comments

Unit system

[marcovje]

More important, what unit system are they going
to use ? :-)

The Pheonix rises from the ashes

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if that's deliberate or, given NASA's recent history, if it's appropriate, funny, or just plain sad.

I guess it's a bit of all that.

..one GIANT flight for mankind

[Whitecloud]

Does anyone have a decent estimate of when we will launch a human expedition to Mars? I mean how far off are the space craft from a feasible mission?

Re:..one GIANT flight for mankind

[MagPulse]

There are countless plans to go to Mars. I remember the talk about Bush saying we would go to Mars by 2015 or 2020 and the ensuing discussion about if it was possible. I think it would be if we put the same amount of effort in to it as the Apollo missions. But when we go to Mars, I want us to go to colonize, not visit once and leave. In order for that to happen we need to make it cheap enough to send tens of thousands of people to Mars with the equipment to survive there their entire lives. I don't know of any plans to do that in my life time, but I'm keeping my eye out for it.

This month's Discover Magazine has an amazing article about building our first starship. It starts out saying we'll probably detect our first Earth-like planet as soon as 2007 or definitely by 2015. By then we could have technologies like hot fusion or even anti-matter engines (not holding my breath), but even if we don't we could probably get to Alpha Centauri in my lifetime with a laser sail. Back here in the Sol system we'd set up a big solar collector that would focus a laser at the ship, pushing and powering it all the way to nearby stars. This to me is a lot more exciting and probable than Mars colonization.

Re:..one GIANT flight for mankind

[pir8garth]

Although I don't have a time table, the project to send humans to mars IS currently being worked on. My sister is an environmental engineer working for NASA on waste managment/recycling issues for a trip to mars, and she routinely has meetings where numerous national research teams meet up to discuss progress towards this goal.

Manned Missions

[CastrTroy]

I think they should really be shooting towards a manned mission. Having actual people on the ship makes mission completion that much more important. Do you really think they would have tried that hard to get Apollo 13 back to earth if there was no people on it? Apart from spontaneous shuttle explosions such as columbia and challenger, they would do everything they could to make sure the mission was a success. It seems that people don't care when billions of tax dollars of spacecraft are lost. However, if a few astronauts die, The world comes to a standstill. Having people on the missions would probably make them have a much higher success rate.

Re:Manned Missions

[mikerich]

Then the emporer died. The bureaucrats though he had wasted funds on a folly of an idea (exploration) when more important things needed to be done at home, like irrigation projects. They ordered the fleets destroyed just as they were about to enter the Mediterranean, and China was subjugated by Europeans who had the will to explore and the courage to accept the risks.

Perhaps Zubrin should read his history a little more carefully before extrapolating from it. China was not overrun as a direct consequence of failing to explore the World. Its descent from a pre-eminent power started in the late Qing Dynasty which was in 1840. China had become decentralised, its bureaucracy was corrupt and their was a prevalent belief in an impending apocalypse. Note the lack of international reasons for a decline in Chinese power - these were internal structural problems. China had been through them before - but this time there was a difference...

China ran up against the newly emergent European superpowers, who were expanding their influence in the region. Britain was a more powerful country - China declined.

Zubrin's example is doubly flawed in that he extrapolates from a situation (albeit badly) where there is a clear winner and a clear loser to a situation where it is impossible to see what could be gained. Mars could never be an economic benefit to Earth, it has nothing of use, its too far away and its too hostile.

Material hyper efficient fuel cells and computers, inexpensive access to fusionable materials, and cheap metals and chemicals are all available in space.

None of them are on Mars, none of them require manned exploration, many of them probably don't even require space travel. Cheap metals are available on Earth (commodities and bulk chemicals are continuing to fall in price). There is nothing out there that we need to grab.

Saying we've got to go and get it when we have no need nor any conceivable need for it (whatever it is) is the economics of the British Empire (or more recently, the Pentagon). It's always someone else's money after all.

Why do I bring this up? Because it's ideas like yours that poison exploratory programs. Instead of grand gestures, you want small cheap steps. You speak of needs at home when they can be solved by innovating for the world.

And its that attitude of the seizing the Last Frontier that has produced white elephant after white elephant, whether it is the Shuttle, Concorde, BAM, NMD, fast breeder reactors - you name it. People are so busy convincing themselves that these things will be vital in the future, they forget to ask one question - why?

We simply have to want it enough.

Easy question then? Why do you want to send humans to Mars?

Best wishes,
Mike.

Was this better than alternatives?

[adlai]

Personally, I think there are a couple of things worth noting regarding this decision. 1st -- although $325 million is a bit "staggering", it's interesting to note that this is the first mission competition that really was a winner take all competition. 30 proposals were submitted, 4 made the finals, and then one winner was picked. I have to think NASA will be doing a lot more of this, since it's got to be more economical in the long-run.

2nd, one of the losers was the extremely cool ARES Martian Airplane proposal. I'm biased because some of the people in my lab were on the science team for that proposal, but I think it would have pushed both the scientific and engineering envelope more than Phoenix will. Was NASA being too conservative (like I think), or simply prudent? I think it's probably hard to tell right now. I sure hope ARES has a shot in 2011 if they run another Scout competition, since I think it'll remain a cool idea even then...

See this story in the Hampton Roads paper if you are more interested about ARES' s rejection/want to see a picture of the prototype.

Flight hardware was already built and paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

This -is- the 2001 lander that was mothballed after we lost both the orbiter and polar lander in 1999.

So it is cheap to send, as the lander is already built. It will of course be updated, some new instruments, a descent imager and an optical microscope (finally! I've been lobbying for that for years on usenet). I certainly hope that the landing gear mechanism and their deployment software, as well as the final retro burn software have been fixed, or will be, between now and 2007, but this is a mothballed bird that was already paid for.

The other Mars Scout options, many of which are quite useful - a seismic net would be -very- helpful, for instance - can still be propose for future funding starts.