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

Stupid joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean the Firebird Mars Lander?

Re:Stupid joke

[acehole]

Shhh! you wanna get sued?!

wuh?

[selfabuse]

obligitory "they're sending a browser/database to Mars?!" comment

Re:wuh?

[DiscoDave_25]

The next instalment of the file sharers plot to dodge the RIAA: Our servers on Mars - subpoena that!

tracking

[DaHat]

... please let this one incorporate better tracking so they can monitor it all the way to the ground... just in case this like a few other notable Martian craft go plunging into the ground at around 300 mph... we can at least see where and how it hit.

Re:tracking

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

attoparsec n.

About an inch. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for multiplication by 10^(-18). A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26 light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26 * 10^(-18) light years, or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/microfortnight equals about 1 inch/sec). This unit is reported to be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K

Sample Return

[Anonymous Coward]

When are we going to see a sample return mission?

That will be a big advance...

Re:Sample Return

[kubrick]

The big advance I'm waiting for is the Martian mission to Earth.

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"

Re:Sample Return

[mikerich]

When are we going to see a sample return mission?

Phoenix was chosen ahead of a sample return mission. I haven't seen what the exact reason was, but I imagine the tight $325 million cap would have precluded a viable sample return mission.

ESA is thinking about a sample return mission at some point around 2011, but funding really depends on the success of Mars Express/Beagle 2.

Best wishes,
Mike.

just for a change...

[iainl]

Rather than make a firebird gag, lets point out that they are delivering it there because the martians called and requested it.

Yes folks, they placed an "Order of the Phoenix".

B'dumph T'sssh.

..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

[Rogerborg]

To what end though? Do we need to go to Mars? It's essentially an illogical folly, so it we're going to do it, let's do it right and let astronauts get back to being explorers rather than truck drivers.

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

[Paulrothrock]

However, they are still hampered by the fact that they are essentially "dumb" implements. They can't say, by themselves anyway, "Hey, that mountain over there looks like a good place to look for fossils. Let's hop in the rover and go take a look." No, they have to wait for human operators to decide for them, then tell them exactly how to get there, all with a 40 minute round trip communication time. Most of the time in a robotic Mars mission is spent sitting on the surface, waiting for orders.

Humans can, should, and will go to Mars. Hopefully in my lifetime, but definitely in my children's. Anyone who's read The Case for Mars knows how easy and cheap it can be.

Someone once said "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." We've been halfway to Mars for almost 50 years. Let's get there.

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.

Re:..one GIANT flight for mankind

[Paulrothrock]

And they could sit there for months or years whilst we make up our minds. Not like the astronauts who would be dependent on their air supply. The lunar explorations were always curtailed by the fragility of the men.

What if they could make all the air and fuel they'd ever need? Mars Direct calls for the production of methane, oxygen and water on Mars, as opposed to taking it all with us. The exploration of the world would probably never had happened if they had to bring everything they needed with them.

We've done the easy bit. We haven't done the bit that involves spending months in microgravity, slowly cooking in solar radiation before attempting to live on a planet with a radically different environment.

The amount of radiation, barring a solar flare or coronal mass ejection is well within tolerable limits. Russians have spent years in orbit, and though they were not able to function, we're only talking about three months tops. This is, of course, not including the possibility of using a tether to create gravity. And the environment on Mars is much more temperate and friendly than the environment on the moon, and we've been to the moon.

If we only did what was easy, none of us would get out of bed in the morning.

It's a sales book, of course it says it will be cheap. My Windows XP manual told me that my life would be much easier after installation. Experience of all high tech projects shows the opposite.

Even if we TRIPLE the cost of the proposed plan, it's still less than what we just spent on a war. ($150 billion.) And that gives five 1.5 year missions covering thousands of square km of the surface, establishing outposts, making discoveries, and learning about how to survive there.

We must take the initiative to go to Mars and stop fearing what might happen.

Re:..one GIANT flight for mankind

[Paulrothrock]

I don't have the time to go around and around on this, so this will be my last reply.

Fortunately, they could be pretty sure that they would have fresh air, water and food in the New World. None of those are found on Mars, you are reliant on the technology you bring with you to keep you alive.

The processes that would be used to generate the materials needed for life support have been in use by industry since the 1800s. The reactors proposed are based on the ones used in nuclear naval vessels. Both are durable, reliable, and rugged.

Other systems, such as door seals, would only encounter one different element; dust. If we have all the water we could ever need, this won't be a problem because the seals could be cleaned very easily. They will not be exposed to a hard vacuum, but an atmosphere similar to the one that the SR-71 and U-2 fly in.

Not the same at all. The Soviet long endurance records all took place within the Earth's magnetosphere where they were protected from the majority of solar radition. The Apollo missions were so short that they are hard to extrapolate from and they all took place during times of low solar activity.

Then launch at low levels of solar activity. At any rate, microgravity is nothing we have not experienced before.

Mars astronauts would be exposed to solar radiation both during the transit to Mars and whilst on the surface.

In transit, yes. On the surface, no. While there would be higher levels of UV radiation than on earth (which have been dealt with in LEO), other harmful radiation is blocked by Mars' atmosphere. A simple solution would be to cover the top of the hab with sandbags to shield out almost all of the radiation.

There is a difference between doing something worthwhile that is hard and something that is pointless and hard. IMHO exploring Mars is firmly in the latter category.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. I feel that exploring space is key to the future of the human race, and that technologies developed in the exploration of space have great uses in terrestrial life.

So for $50 billion I could get 150 Phoenix missions (probably more once mass production cuts in), explore vastly more of Mars, land in places that are too risky for manned missions, spend far longer looking and not risk anyone's lives.

Let's assume for a minute that Phoenix can explore an area of 10 square meters. Let's also assume that you can get 500 missions for the cost of 5 manned missions. Let's also assume that, with the help of a pressurized rover, the manned missions have an effective range of 1000km (possible, there are cars that can go that far). This means that the probes can explore 5000 square meters, or 5 square kilometers. The manned missions can explore 5 x 3.14 x 1000km x 1000km (5 times pi times radius squared). The manned missions have an effective exploration area of 1.5 million square km, or about 300,000 times the area of the probes. Of course, that assumes that all they do is drive around. However, I think that each mission is capable of exploring both geologically and archeobiologically 10 square km (50 km^2 total), meaning that they still have 10 times the effective exploration capacity of 500 Phoenix missions. The very fact that the human crews can travel to newer and more interesting places as opposed to waiting six months for another mission to get there and having the added risks of 500 launches.

That is also not counting the value of the experience from living on Mars, the establishment of outposts on the planet for future colonization, and the increased amount of science able to be performed by humans because of their ability to act on their own to solve problems and explore new developments further.

Like I said, I can't go around and around on this. If you disagree, then we'll just have to leave it at that.

Re:..one GIANT flight for mankind

[barawn]

Why? What is there that we can't have better and cheaper on Earth? Mars is a rock, frozen day and night, baked by solar radiation; its atmosphere, what little there is of it, is poisonous, the soil is just plain weird - why would we want to live there? It would make Antarctica look appealing.

There are two questions here:

1: Why should we, humanity, go?
2: Why should anyone, as a single person, go?

The answer to the second one is easy. Because no one else has. No one else has seen the sky thousands of different shades of pink that we've never dreamed of on Earth, or walked in one-third G, or seen valleys so wide and vast that you can't see the sides because they're under the horizon, or an escarpment as high as Mount Everest. Don't forget, people live in extremely hostile environments all the time, and explorers go just about everywhere for the thrill of it. Earth is just as much of a rock as Mars is.

And hell, it'd kick to see Earth in the sky at night. Now *that'd* be beautiful.

So why would we want to live there? Well, for one, because it's not Earth. It's different. From a purely practical perspective, ignoring the radiation issues (which are not as bad as people think - bad, yes, and you'd have to take precautions, but not impossible), Mars is a healthier place to live, fundamentally, because of the lower gravity. It's just less of a strain on bones and your heart. Yah, you can't return to Earth. So?

The answer to the first one is a little more complex, but it's fundamentally the same as the second. We want to go to Mars because it's not Earth. Let me put it to you this way.

Take a hypothetical teenager, or very young adult.
Why would they want to leave their parent's house? They have everything they want there - shelter, a private space to themselves, and it's cheaper: don't pay for rent, utilities, food. It's perfect. Living on your own looks like hell in comparison. But they do it - why? Because 1) they know they have to, just like we have to get off this rock. Have to. Humans have to keep expanding, have to keep moving, have to keep learning. It's what makes us human - what makes us us, and 2) because fundamentally, in the long run, it's better for them. They learn more (how to manage a household, how to fix things), develop more, and grow extremely quickly. Again, likewise - it's better for us to go to another world, like Mars. We'll learn more, really quickly. Like how to survive in heavy radiation. Like ecology engineering, and closed-systems engineering, which we have no need to learn here on Earth, but we could DEFINITELY use the technology! Like automated factories, robotic construction equipment, atmospheric engineering. The list goes on. Yah, we could do it here on Earth - but we don't need to, and so we won't do it. Necessity is the mother of invention, and all that. How many examples in human history do you need to justify that?

Perhaps a tiny fraction of the expenditure you are calling for would be better spent on reducing our addiction to fossil fuels which is going to end up killing us.

This is the beauty of pure science. Go to Mars! Guess what? There are no fossil fuels there, so we'll learn really quickly how to live without fossil fuels real quick, and export that knowledge back to Earth.

Humans are getting lazy and complacent - things are too easy. "Well, we could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels... but why would we? There's no real need..." You have to keep pushing. Have to keep moving. Have to keep learning.

doesn't matter to me

[selfabuse]

heh, I never liked Arizona anyway.

Not so staggering

[PaschalNee]

A staggering $325 million grant was awarded to the University of Arizona

I don't see what is so staggering about this amount. For example, I'm guessing hundreds of millions of $ are spent every year designing cars. Cars that are never more than a few miles away from a local garage. If your sending a device a few million miles away you'd want to be pretty sure it's going to work. Not a inexpensive proposition. There are no Pep Boys on Mars

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]

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.

That's thinking backwards. If you don't have astronauts to worry about you don't have to worry about the mission succeeding come what may. You do everything you can to make the mission a success - but if it doesn't - oh well, switch it off, learn a lesson and do it again.

The simple economics are in favour of unmanned missions, Phoenix will travel to Mars, touch down on another World, and perform useful science for less than half the cost of a single Shuttle launch to take water to the white elephant currently circling the planet.

Yes let's have more exploration, but let's leave Roger Ramjet back on Earth. The manned space programme has been a drain on America's coffers and NASA's resources for far too long. It's time to put it to rest.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Manned Missions

[Paulrothrock]

In "The Case for Mars," Zubrin talks about the court bureaucrats in China. The emporer had opened up china in the late 1300s and sent treasure fleets to Indonesia, India, Arabia, and even the west coast of Africa. They had seven masts when European ships had at most two.

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.

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. Material hyper efficient fuel cells and computers, inexpensive access to fusionable materials, and cheap metals and chemicals are all available in space. We must have the courage and conviction to simply reach out and grab them, and this can be done for a small percentage of the GNP. Merely increasing NASA's budget to the same percentage of the federal budget as it was during the Apollo era and providing a lofty goal will be enough for NASA to land several humans on Mars and more (like develop an economical heavy-lift launch vehicle). We simply have to want it enough.

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.

Top 10 Reasons to Send Phoenix to Mars

[AtariAmarok]

10. That old 1981 pontiac is now so rusty that even the junk yards won't take it.

9. Cyclops and Wolverine have been fighing over her for 26 years no. Enough is enough, get her out of the picture.

8. As part of the deal for acquiring the Phoenix Suns, the Martian sports magnate had to buy the whole city.

7. The NHL Phoenix Coyotes got tired of all the ribbing about having a hockey team where there is no ice. The Martian poles way outfreeze Canada. Put that in your back-bacon, Maple Leafs!

6. They wanted to keep those 133 degree summer temperatures. All they have to do now is replace the "+" with a "-".

5. It's part of a plot by Scottsdale to take over the state.

4. "Project Phoenix" wants to shut down by finding Phoenix as the example of life on another planet.

3. It's punishment for the city name violating one of J.K. Rowling's book title trademarks.

2. Get rid of it already, it is too confusing to remember whether or not the O goes before the E.

1. "Because it blocks my view of Tucson".

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.

Pay attention:

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they haven't recycled the imperial to numeric conversion code.

Um, they are recycling Mars Polar Lander, not Mars Climate Orbiter. The unit conversion omission occurred on MCO, not MPL.

MCO was already recycled and has been performing flawlessly... its reincarnation is known as Mars Odyssey.

You got a score of five because people thought you were saying something insightful about the spaceprogram. Actually, though, you don't know shit about it.

Proof of alien life...

[pir8garth]

Proof of alien life was captured on film; much to the surprise of the people at NASA, a careless martian forgot to throw away his bottle of Aquafina...

Re:Recycling code too?

[QuantumFTL]

Dislaimer: I write software for Mars missions, including the 2007 Pheonix mission.

I hope they haven't recycled the imperial to numeric conversion code.

I must say I'm really tired of hearing about this every time there's an article about a mars misson. I mean, no one says "I hope they haven't recycled those overflow errors" every time an Ariane 5 rocket is lauched! Was it a stupid problem? Yes, however people seem to forget how rediculously hard it is to successfully launch a mission like this. Yes it's very easy to prevent a single mistake, but thousands of potential mistakes? Our track record with Mars probes is twice as good as the nearest competitor (Russia) and it's looking to continue that way.

Somebody want to contribute an open source alternative to them?

Look. The people working at NASA know how to write this stuff. That's not the problem. The problem is that on large scale projects like this, it's entirely possible for things like this to be overlooked... People tend to worry about the "hard" stuff rather than the easy stuff. And as for why they even have to convert units, as far as I understand NASA generally uses metric, it is the american aerospace companies that generally insist on using imperial units.

Also, Open Source is *NOT* the catch-all answer for everything! The development team I'm on uses linux for our development, and our software will be running on a lot of linux (and windows) boxes during the mission. We love open source, and even use some open libraries (such as castor) in our code as allowed (we are not allowed to link to GPL code of course).

However, I would cringe if the flight software was some open source deal... I mean, looking at the linux kernel sources, (some say it is the gem of open source) I wouldn't want to have to depend on anything written like *THAT* to handle flying in space. Great for on the ground where we can fix/replace/patch if there's a problem but... It's not cleanly designed and implemented like, say, QNX, etc. Few people alive have experience writing software for spaceflight systems, and I expect they they know just a little bit more about it than even the best of linux hackers do.

I guess I just don't understand why the parent post was modded insightful. Nothing personal, in7ane, but really!

Re:Recycling code too?

[QuantumFTL]

Well the software I write (as mentioned in my previous comment) runs on ground computers, and is used by the scientists. We don't need a simulator for it, because we have the actual computers here we can test on.

But yes, the flight software is tested on simulators. My officemate wrote the motor simulations for MER for testing the flight software... He says their testing methods are almost paranoid in their coverage of possible issues... In fact, they are still testing madly right now in case they find a problem, it might be able to be worked around.

Simulations are only so good. There's no way the simulations can take every little detail into account, at least with the computers we have today. It's truely amazing how many different ways hardware can fail. And don't forget cosmic rays cause random bitflips now and then...

Yes testing can uncover a lot of issues but certainly not everything.

Good question though.

Re:Recycling code too?

[RKBA]

Hi QuantumFTL,

I wrote the firmware for the Meteorological subsystem (MET) of MPL (known at the time as Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor - MVACS). It was quite depressing when MPL crashed after myself (and many others) had worked on it for so long - particularly since the MET package never even got powered on! :-(

It looks like you've substituted a scanning LIDAR for the Tunable Diode Laser (TDL) Spectrometer that we flew (or intended to fly) on MPL, and I assume (and hope) you are using a different microprocessor than we did. The UT69RH051 (the UTMC rad hard version of the 8051 microprocessor) has a very serious design flaw that we didn't discover until after flight testing had started, that causes dropped interrupts if the serial port is used in full-duplex mode. If you do happen to be using that same microcontroller, you should be aware of this advisory issued by UTMC:

UT69RH051 Microcontroller PCA & Serial Port Interrupt Flag Anomaly

If you would like to contact me for any reason, you can email me at: "SlashDot_at_spamex.com" (substitute "@" for "_at_").

Best of luck on a successful mission, and may the Phoenix rise from the ashes of MPL! :-)

-- Ron

P.S
No operating system at all (neither open source nor closed source) was used in the meteorological subsystem of MPL. The firmware I wrote was a single program that ran on the "bare metal" of the processor board, and used interrupts to effect time slicing (in effect, it was its own operating system).