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.

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 ...

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?

[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.

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.

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

[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!

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

[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.

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.

You can already hear what Titan sounds like...

[TigerTale]

Sounds of an alien world

How soon

[GWBasic]

How soon until they rename it the Firefox project?

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

[Stanistani]

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

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?

[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.