Phoenix Mars Polar Lander Website Launched

ciph3r writes "The Phoenix Mars Polar Lander mission has just launched their public website. '[The] mission is to land in the northern polar region of Mars (about 70 N latitude) in May 2008 and to expose the upper few feet of surface material using a robotic arm to find the ice that was discovered by the Odyssey mission in 2002. The history of this ice and its interaction with the martian atmosphere will be studied throughout the 3-month primary mission. This ice-rich soil may be one of the few habitable environments on Mars where a biological system can survive.'"

Comments

The logo...

[christopherfinke]

Does anyone know why the "o" in the Phoenix logo is the symbol for male? Also, what does the year 2007 have to do with anything?

Life on Mars - from Earth

[saskboy]

I hope they are taking some precautions to reduce the terestrial contamination of regions of Mars where we expect there is the posibility of sustaining life. Because if we land something where there is frozen water, we could very well seed it with micro-organisms from Earth.

Re:Life on Mars - from Earth

[HermanAB]

I'd like to see the micro-organisms that can survive a year or more in space. The probes are as sterile as they can possibly be, by the time they get there. That big yellow thing up there in the sky is a nuclear reaction...

Re:Life on Mars - from Earth

[saskboy]

" is a nuclear reaction."

OK, but then the organism has a good supply of energy that means. I'm sure if we could design something to operate in space, then so can nature.

Locations of ice?

[hazee]

The European Mars Express probe has a radar boom that was meant to do really accurate measuring of the subsurface ice. This sounds like the sort of knowledge that would be really useful to have in deciding exactly where to aim the Phoenix mission.

But they delayed unfolding the radar boom on Mars Express after some analysis showed that the forces released in springing it open might be enough to mess up the whole spacecraft.

First it was meant to happen in April 2004, then delayed till June I think. After that I can't find any furthur information. Anyone know what the score with that is?

Was the Scout program rigged from the beginning?

[dolphin558]

This mission bears a striking resemblance to the unsuccessful 1998 Mars Polar Lander. The Scout program is designed to identify and choose the most promising mission ideas. I am assuming that it was coincidence that the winner was a mirror to NASA's very own MPL. I'd like to think there were no other ideas (Mars Glider, etc) that should have won but didn't because this mission resembled NASA's baby.

Another polar lander, eh?

[SeaDour]

Let's hope it doesn't mysteriously disappear like the last one we tried sending.

Yes it does...

[RKBA]

Yes it does bear a striking resemblence to the 1998 Mars Polar Lander mission. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the Scout isn't just a rebuild of it - hopefully with the landing gear problem fixed. ;-)

I always thought that not reusing the design and development work that went into the 1998 Mars Polar Lander is an example of NASA waste. Just because the landing gear failed to function properly is no reason to discard all the design and development time and effort that people (including myself - I spent about a year writing the firmware for the MET metrological subsystem for the 1998 mission) put into the rest of the project. Design and development is the major cost of spacecraft, and any reasonable person would simple correct the landing gear problem and try again rather than trashing the entire design and starting over from scratch.

-- Ron

Re:Yes it does...

[QuickFox]

Design and development is the major cost of spacecraft,

Why don't they send three nearly identical copies of the same lander (re-using the same design and development effort), and have them land close enough to communicate directly with each other by radio? Then if one lander loses the ability to communicate with the orbiters or with Earth, or even two of them lose it, the third can relay their data. If something goes wrong on a lander, debugging should become far easier if you can still communicate with the broken system.

The scientific instruments could be distributed among them, each carrying roughly a third of the load. This would greatly reduce the size and weight of each lander, which I suppose would simplify the parachute system, the landing system, and many other parts.

Some instruments might be repeated on two landers or on all three, especially some very small and lightweight instruments.

If the landers are small and light enough, all three can travel on the same ship from Earth to Mars.