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Phoenix Headed for Martian North Pole in 2007

Posted by michael on from the need-some-original-names dept.

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."

5 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't you mean the Firebird Mars Lander?

  2. Not so staggering by PaschalNee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  3. Manned Missions by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    1. Re:Manned Missions by Paulrothrock · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
  4. Was this better than alternatives? by adlai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.