Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

It doesn't come easy writes "There is a nice write-up over at Space.com about Phoenix, NASA's next Mars lander. The article includes a few more details about the steps NASA is taking to ensure a successful mission." The Phoenix project was first given the green light earlier this year and hopes to benefit from some hard lessons learned on earlier projects.

Comments

They need tricorders

[gbulmash]

Great, but if they really want to find signs of life, they need a tricorder. :-)

Interesting article, though, especially on the steps they're taking not to contaminate the landing site with fuel exhaust and other substances the lander will bring with it. OTOH, it might be interesting if they did some experiments where they purposefully contaminated the landing site, particularly with stuff like "extremophile" organisms that might have a chance at surviving on Mars.

- Greg

Re:They need tricorders

[WillAffleckUW]

Great, but if they really want to find signs of life, they need a tricorder. :-)

Or a portable DNA Microarray ... which might be a tad more useful, since they already have a portable assay onboard.

Re:They need tricorders

[Rei]

Not very useful if the life isn't DNA-based. :) I.e., RNA genes and the RNA-world hypothesis for RNA-based life, nanobacteria (unknown mechanism - possibly DNA, possibly RNA, possibly strange self-replicating crystals, etc), self-catalytic protein hypercycles, and possibly other more esoteric forms of life.

Re:They need tricorders

[WillAffleckUW]

Not very useful if the life isn't DNA-based. :) I.e., RNA genes and the RNA-world hypothesis for RNA-based life, nanobacteria (unknown mechanism - possibly DNA, possibly RNA, possibly strange self-replicating crystals, etc), self-catalytic protein hypercycles, and possibly other more esoteric forms of life.

Hence the assay I mentioned looking for the chemicals used to build RNA/DNA (altho I'd hate to try to do Crystallography on mars ....)

Re:They need tricorders

[Ucklak]

They should bring cats http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00128/en/cats/ history.htm

(I like cats BTW but not enough to think that this -http://catsinsinks.com/- site is cute )

Re:They need tricorders

[WillAffleckUW]

Hell, why don't we take Rosetta Resolver along just for kicks so we can analyze the data on Mars!

I doubt they have enough server farms there.

Besides, since it takes days to work, I'm sure we can cope with the time delay from Mars ...

Nothing to see here...

[Sensible Clod]

yeah, I guess that's about right.

Re:Nothing to see here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, mods!! This is a little more insightful than it is off topic. BFD, it's halfway there. It's like posting an article about it being the 30th anniversary of the moon landing. Um, yeah, it was going to happen eventually. What about the 43rd. anniversary? How come that won't be news enough to post? What about when the project is 64.729% complete? It should certainly be worth posting for discussion then, right?

Christ almighty, wait until the fucking thing has landed/crashed. That will be a post worth discussing.

For now? - Nothing to see here, please move along.

In Search of Martian Water

[WillAffleckUW]

not to mention other building blocks.

Looks like a useful mission.

Now if only they could include a robot penguin that hops on it ...

Inviting Disaster

[man_of_mr_e]

Given NASA's track record, isn't it sort of inviting disaster to name your spacecraft "Phoenix"?

Who wants to be it explodes on entry.

Re:Inviting Disaster

[sconeu]

Given NASA's track record, isn't it sort of inviting disaster to name your spacecraft "Phoenix"?

Yeah, because the Borg will come and attack it before you launch.

Re:Inviting Disaster

[__aaclcg7560]

Since the whole purpose of this particular lander is to move dirt around itself, a straight plunge into the ground would be just as effective. If it works for comets, it'll do for planets.

Re:Inviting Disaster

[Cerdic]

One might say that the name is fitting, like a phoenix that has risen from the ashes of a previously failed project.

Re:Inviting Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoenix is not half as bad a name as that of the shuttle Atlantis. I mean, Atlantis ?!?...that's something that fell to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean!

Why an immobile lander?

[visgoth]

Why would NASA go with a lander that can't move once its on the surface? Surely the success of the two rovers has proven that its worth the extra complexity to have somthing that can travel. What if the lander ends up in an undesireable area, but there's somthing of interest just out of reach? If you're going through the trouble of building, then launching somthing to go to Mars, you may as well go all out.

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[TigerTale]

From The Fine Article:

The "deck" of the legged lander is 4 feet (1.2 meters) across--about the size of a breakfast table--and is loaded with science equipment.

It's possible the mission planners did not want to sacrifice instrument weight in favor of wheels and motors.

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[visgoth]

That's probably the reason, but the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are somewhat bigger:

1.5 meter (4.9 feet) high by 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) wide by 1.6 meter (5.2 feet) long, according to this site.

I'm thinking NASA is trying to save money by not sending somthing with mobile capability. Its a pity, as the dev work's already been done... may as well use it.

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[DoctorShadow]

Agreed. Having a mobile lander is much better, otherwise it needs to wait for the ice to return to obtain further data. Perhaps the life only appears when ice is present or for just short periods of time after the ice goes away? It certainly would need some kind of snow tires or wheels at least.

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[Anonymous Coward]

simple reason: energy. You must've noticed this the last time you filled up, but it costs a bundle to haul stuff around even on wheels with electric motors.

On mars, the price is in W/m^2 of daytime solar input. And this solar input is significantly less (or significantly more variable) than on the equatorial band... so you might as well spare energy for the instruments.

Plus of course the actual total mission weight requirements imposed by the choice of launch vehicle and trajectory...

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[koko775]

The answer should be simple: money, complications, and power requirements. Why waste the probe's lifetime moving when it can test instead?

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[TheGavster]

It's all a logical progression:

Why send humans to space when you can send a probe?
Why send mobile probes when you can send probes with long range sensors?
Why send landers when you can just send satellites?
Why send satellites when you can just observe from Earth?

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[iamlucky13]

This mission is landing in a more difficult spot, near the pole instead of at the equator like the rovers. It's also on a slightly smaller budger: $350 million instead of $820 million for the 2 rovers (quantity discount included). More importantly, it's goal is not a survey of a broad area of the surface of Mars, but rather a more detailed look at the ground below what Spirit and Opportunity can get to simply by spinning their wheels. It may even directly encounter water ice.

There's more to it than the above, but in a nutshell, it's hard to dig a hole in the ground when you're driving cross country.

As far as going all out, there comes a limit to the practicality of it. Suppose we really went "all out" and spent $100 billion on a manned mission banking it all on farming in the Martian soil only to get there and find there wasn't enough nutrients in the dirt and we should've brought a truckload of miracle grow.

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[Wavicle]

so you might as well spare energy for the instruments.

How much energy does an electric motor consume when not being used? Couldn't they dedicate most, if not all, of their power to the science instruments at one site, and only direct power to the motors when moving to another site?

Re:Why an immobile lander?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had read the article you would know that this lander is actually doing a powered, controlled descent. That's pretty risky business. The Polar Lander was the last lander to do that, and it failed. This lander is also intended for digging into the soil, so one place is as good as any other.

Subsurface water

[lightyear4]

Some water on the surface of mars has been already detected. However, whether it be frozen or liquid, the search water beneath the regolith is the single most important priority for any manned exploration of our celestial neighbor. Any water present in subsurface acquifers would open the floodgates for progress on mars. It would: provide for human habitation, be a veritable hotbed for xenobiology, and provide the chemical components for fuel cells and even rocket propellant. Our generation needs something exciting as motivation..cross your fingers.

Re:Subsurface water

[halivar]

It would: provide for human habitation, be a veritable hotbed for xenobiology, and provide the chemical components for fuel cells and even rocket propellant.

No, it would simply provide a means for crackpot pseudo-scientists to complain about us ruining the precious Martian ecosystem ("Where there's water, there's life! Proof of life on Mars!1!!!").

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go register the www.redpeace.org domain to head them off.

Re:Subsurface water

[WindBourne]

Well first and formost, we already know that there is water there, in the first of ICE. How much there is, remains to be determined. ICE is plenty good for building habitats. From it, we can get water of which it will provide us with H2 for for combination with C02 to give us methane. Likewise, we get O2 for our needs.

What the liquid water will really tell us, is there a possibility of Life. Quite honestly, water provides the best chance of life, where as MOST earth bacteria will not grow (salmonella being one of the main exception; pass a black light over frozen chicken (older is better) and be surprised. Any phosphorescence is 97-98% certain salmonella).

Oh, thank goodness...

[RobertB-DC]

Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

I had to look at that one twice. The first time, all I saw was "Phoenix Mars Lander Hits..." and my brain filled in the rest with "Object, Is Lost".

I wish they'd include a microphone

[xTown]

I know that they'd rather use the weight for something with an actual scientific purpose, and I know that all it would transmit would be ssshhhsssshhhhhsssshhhh but it would be neat to hear what another planet sounds like. It wouldn't even have to record--just transmit a couple of minutes live.

Re:I wish they'd include a microphone

[DNS-and-BIND]

NASA already does quite enough of this non-scientific public relations garbage. You'd make a fine Congressman.

Re:I wish they'd include a microphone

[billybob2001]

Or maybe

"Get your stinking primitive junk off my planet!

Wasn't Beagle II obvious enough for you?"

Re:I wish they'd include a microphone

[blincoln]

Yes! Science must be made as sterile and boring as possible in order to prevent its contamination by the lesser peoples of the Earth! The human sense of wonder is an irrelevant illusion and does nothing to further the cause of collecting as much non-soundwave data as possible, then rendering it in the least exciting way that can be achieved by modern technology!

welcome?

[jshaped]

And were the people that lived there welcoming?
Did they offer a room to stay in?

Present Day Life?

[JoeShmoe950]

NASA's next Mars lander, the Phoenix mission, will head for the northern arctic region of the red planet in 2007, not only ready to dig for subsurface water ice but also probe for habitats of present day life. Are they really expecting to find habitats of present day life? If so, what are the chances of such life actually surviving to this day?

Re:Present Day Life?

[Cervantes]

Are they really expecting to find habitats of present day life? If so, what are the chances of such life actually surviving to this day?

IANA-NASAS (I am not a NASA Scientist), but I would expect that the odds of finding "present day life" today would be pretty damn good. Finding "life as we know it" or "our current expectation of life" may be less likely, but I wouldn't expect the "present day life" to have died out this morning.

Unless it had a bad breakfast burrito. Or forgot it's emergency pants. Do they have emergency pants on Mars?

Any NASA scientists present have the answer?

halfway, yea, right

[frovingslosh]

It's hit it's halfway point? It hasn't even launched yet! The headline is rather deceptive. Lot of thinks can happen, particularly with a President spending us into poverty and certain to be replaced in a couple of years.

Re:halfway, yea, right

[ScentCone]

It's hit it's halfway point? It hasn't even launched yet! The headline is rather deceptive. Lot of thinks can happen, particularly with a President spending us into poverty and certain to be replaced in a couple of years.

Well, at least some of what we're spending is on educational measures that hopefully will make sure you can't get a high school degree without knowing how to use "it's" vs. "its" (perhaps you can apply for a grant and learn it anyway).

Lot of thinks can happen

But not a lot of "thinks" about your post, or your understanding of the way NASA funds are allocated, apparently. You do know who your congressional representative is, don't you?

... certain to be replaced ...

Congratulations! All wasted grammar class time aside, you're at least aware that presidents can only serve two terms.

Now, with the new president that you're choosing to succeed him, what's your preference? More taxes for more NASA funding, or less spending on where most of our tax dollars go (social programs and personal entitlements). Doesn't matter, of course, what you think about the president, because the budget has to be approved by congress, and only congress can change the tax law and appropriate more money from you and any businesses with which you do business as a customer or employee.

I agree that the headline in the post is deceptive, but not nearly so much your notion that we're "spending us into poverty." We have the single most productive, efficient economy in the world. "Us" is the private sector. Taxes and federal budgets are a subset of that, and it's up to the congress to spend what they take in, and no more. The president, with few exceptions, and regardless of political party, can only work within the bounds that congress establishes.

Re:halfway, yea, right

[Rei]

only congress can change the tax law

The president, through veto power alone, has at least as much power as congress (if they don't like it, they veto, and congressional supermajorities are very rare). However, it doesn't end there: the administration sets their party's political agenda in congress. As if that's not enough, they have the huge bludgeon of media attention to their statements to help shove it through. Then, their cabinet is in charge of the implementation of the passed legislation. We have a very strong executive in our system of government.

Besides, new budgets have to be approved annually, so the issue always comes up.

Re:halfway, yea, right

[ScentCone]

The president, through veto power alone, has at least as much power as congress (if they don't like it, they veto, and congressional supermajorities are very rare). However, it doesn't end there: the administration sets their party's political agenda in congress

But the whole point is that if the majority of the country doesn't like the way that, say, congress is doing things (along partisan lines), the administration will only be able to set the agenda for the minority in the house. That leaves the president unable to do much of anything, other than (as you say) work within what they've been handed and spend accordingly.

Yes, the cabinet officials direct the operations of their departments, but huge swaths of their budgets are legislatively directed towards specific programs, certain ratios of this vs. that, and other limitations/obligations that don't really give them much wiggle room.

One might be inclined to think that, say, the DOD would be the biggest as-they-see-fit spender, but when it comes to big ticket items, like opening or closing bases, or adopting/discarding weapons programs, peacekeeping in Bosnia, or rebuilding in Iraq, the funds always have to be approved by congress. In both of those conflict examples, by the way, we are talking about veto-proof appropriations, by congress.

We do indeed have a strongly configured executive branch - and it's a good thing, too. If congress had to oversee daily operations, we'd be completely stagnant on every front, and sure as hell unable to nimbly respond to things like what just happened on the Gulf Coast.

Re:halfway, yea, right

[Rei]

If the president has a minority, that still leaves them with:

  * Veto power (I.e., still a base 50% of control)
  * Introduction of whatever legislation and amendments he wants
  * The "bully pulput" of having all of their talking points reported.
  * The ability to choose how to enforce all of the details of legislation that gets passed which aren't explicitly stated or are open to interpretation.

I.e., the office of the president, even in a minority-party situation, is the biggest influence as to what policies get passed.

Re:halfway, yea, right

[ballpoint]

big ticket items, like opening or closing bases

Lysdexious me read this as opening and closing braces (not the kind that Lisa needs), and wondered why they are big ticket items.

Then, looking at coders' salaries and the number of braces that end up in their correct location in code, I realized they really are.

Re:halfway, yea, right

[isorox]

It's hit it's halfway point? It hasn't even launched yet!

It's the Phoenix Mars Lander. It's currently Landed in Phoenix, so that's 2/3 the way there!

Mars Lander... what happened to the penguin?

[Supp0rtLinux]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/3 1/1418226&tid=229

:)

PDA & Smartphone Optimized Sites
Replacing my laptop with a Treo

Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

[Timesprout]

and quits NASA after deciding the idea of being strapped to a load of explosives and blasted off into the freezing vacuum of space to a god forsaken planet has little or no appeal. In other news the NASA AI team are flogged and then fired.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how the Chinee feel about it.

Get your ass back to Mars...

[kiwipeso]

I find the idea of continued Mars expoloration exciting and would like to eventually see people land on Mars.

UNITS!

[billybob2001]

See what happens when you forget to do the metric / imperial conversion?

Lessons learned

[azcoffeehabit]

Like maybe correctly converting standard to metric?? Or maybe they just decided to do it all in metric and get it right the first time...

You can already hear what Titan sounds like...

[TigerTale]

Sounds of an alien world

Re:You can already hear what Titan sounds like...

[xTown]

Yeah, but that wasn't a microphone as such: it was there to detect whether there was thunder. The signal received was processed into an approximation of actual sound. Check out the Planetary Society's page on the acoustic sensor.

I'm talking more like a real mic, sending the actual sound. Even the sounds of the instruments moving and working would be neat.

How soon

[GWBasic]

How soon until they rename it the Firefox project?

Re:How soon

[Allelophagia]

"How soon until they rename it the Firefox project?"

When NASA realise they are guilty of trademark infringement.

Re:How soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorta like how Mozilla had to change the name of the browser from Phoenix to Firebird to finally Firefox, amirite?

If we're building a robot out of discarded parts..

[Stanistani]

... then I say we call it GIR...

A new form of pollution

[wetdirtmud]

How many will they put on that planet before realizing that it's going to hit a rock and get stuck?
But seriously, let's wish the Phoenix luck, it will need it with all of that burning down to ashes and reincarnating itself that will be doing these next few years. (:

Humans

[Crixus]

We simply need to send people to Mars. :-)

Re:Humans

[WillAffleckUW]

We simply need to send people to Mars. :-)

You might want to set up some supplies of potable water, edible food, breathable atmosphere, energy stores, and some living quarters first.

No Brain, No Headache

[Doc Ruby]

One way to protect its success from catastrophic failure: no human crew. That way, NASA's continued cost-reduction corner-cutting, and premature launches for media windows, will mean that no one will watch the video if it scuttles on Mars landing in a bang.

You just need the right bait

[Anonymous Coward]

If life on Mars is anything like life on Earth try hanging an iPod in front of the camera. Might try a digital watch as well, they may not be quite as high up the evolutionary ladder as we are.

No liquid water?

[scdeimos]

From the article:

"Mars is our sister planet. It's small, cold and no liquid on the surface ... however, we do see water in its frozen form," Smith reported.

and...

Touching down inside the arctic circle, just before summer on Mars and at the end of spring, ice will have retreated from the area. "We're going to land on dry soil. We can start digging immediately," Smith said.

If the ice is retreating in spring/summer then it's melting, right? Where's the liquid water going?

Re:No liquid water?

[ColaMan]

Water ice doesn't melt on Mars - it simply evaporates, like "dry ice" (CO2) does here.
The atmospheric pressure on Mars is just a little too low to allow liquid water to exist.

Re:No liquid water?

[Anonymous Coward]

(sublimates)

Re:No liquid water?

[lorelorn]

Water doesn't melt on Mars- it can't due to low pressure.

It sublimes, which means that it goes directly from a solid to a gas.

This is more to do with pressure than temperature-it doesn't mean the ice is melting becasue it's 200 kelvin or anything.

Re:No liquid water?

[lightyear4]

If you were on earth, that might be the case. Several factors are at work here: Earth's air pressure at sea level is 14 lb/in (1015ish millibars); on the other hand, martian atmospheric pressures are more on the order of 5 millibars. Thats damned low. Aside from that, you have an exceptionally arid atmosphere and most of the ice on mars is actually CO2. Add all of this together and the ice doesnt even have a chance to melt; it simply sublimes away into the atmosphere.

Re:If we're building a robot out of discarded part

[Anonymous Coward]

BRILLIANT on calling it GIR.

Speaking of insanity - I was a the lecture the writer of this article attended. They cut weight everywhere - no direct signal to earth, the weather station (from Canada) has a piece of tape as a wind speed and direction gauge. And they cut the landing hazard avoidance system from the budget. This was supposed to be the test before we trusted a billion dollar heavy rover to land on the surface. Now no test. GIRRR indeed!

"Is it supposed to be stupid?" - Zim
"It's not stupid! It's Advanced!!!" - Almighty Tallest

Why not pay the price with Pu RTGs instead?

[swb]

Is their mass a problem?

Re:Why not pay the price with Pu RTGs instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

they already have an RTG powered MSL planned for 2009.

Phoenix is merely a sort of retread tire- its just the leftover parts from the cancelled Mars 2001 lander. it was cancelled when the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander had a malfunction and crashed on landing. They didnt want to risk repeating the same embarrasing scenario, even though the probable cause of the malfunction was found and fixed... leave it to face-saving political manueuvering to get in the way of science! ...but at least now that its 6 years later, they have put new instrumentation on the 2001 lander package so its a better mission than was planned, and will now allow us to get much better data than what MPL was designed to get.

So far so good.

[Beechmere]

...as long as it doesn't "hit" its target.

in other news

[v1]

phoenix lander launch cancelled due to rising fuel costs.

From TFA

[weighn]

"True to its namesake, Phoenix has risen from the ashes of two unsuccessful attempts to reach Mars: The ill-fated Mars Polar Lander that was lost at the planet in 1999 and a Mars Surveyor Program lander that was cancelled and mothballed in 2000"

Re:If we're building a robot out of discarded part

[iamlucky13]

"Yay! We're doomed!"

"I'm going to sing the doom song. Doom doom doom doom..." (different episode, but...)

Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

[tooth]

Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

Dammit! I said go left!

Re:NASA scared of detecting life on mars?

[zippthorne]

Funny story. afaik, ALL of the life-detecting experiments on Viking detected life according to the parameters set forth before the experiment. Later on, the experiments were either "discovered" to be invalid due to some kind of contamination or shown to have actually proved the nonexistance of life.

My thoughts? an actual bona-fide "life-detector" is still too complicated to attempt. all of the proxies that we try to measure are just that, proxies, and can represent chemistry that we simply weren't aware of. weeding out the data from the noise is simply too difficult, then or now.

BTW, mass spectrometers don't actually measure any kind of "mass spectrum." they measure charge-to-mass ratio. It takes incredible resources and trickiness to get information about anyting more massive than simple elements and binary molecules. Determining the existance specific classes of molecules like hydrocarbons is very difficult. Made even moreso by the fact that you cannot guarantee that your ions are singly ionized.

Gas spectrometers aren't much better. You could get absorption bands that can be fitted to more than one possible mixture. Especially problematic since we're not even sure what to look for. Why should we expect martian life to be hydrocarbon based?

So, It's very hard to be sure of your results in a "is there life" experiment. My guess is that rather than put themselves in the position of declaring "There is life" as in Viking, only to retract later, they're simply avoiding the question altogether. Nothing sinister about it unless you think deliberately avoiding answering the one question everyone thinks they're paying for answers to is sinister...

Why are they not using the Airbags again?

[origamy]

Once free of a parachute, Phoenix will depend upon an "ease on down" propulsion system that was last utilized on the failed Mars Polar Lander mission.

Why?? Why use a system that has no success history instead of using a system that has succeeded 3 times already?

I just don't get it.

Could they land here?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m07_m12/maps/M08/M 0804688.gif

I'd really like to see those bushes at higher resolution...

Nah that's ok

[Anonymous Coward]

It's made from nanotech and regenerative mice. The fragments will reassemble themselves on the surface.

Breakfast, anyone?

[Tablizer]

Many of the scientific instruments for Phoenix were already built, needing little or no modification for Mars duties......The "deck" of the legged lander is 4 feet (1.2 meters) across--about the size of a breakfast table--and is loaded with science equipment.

You know, the lander *does* look like a breakfast table. Maybe the NASA budget problems are worse than we thought, and they had to use furniture from the break room.