One Year Until Phoenix Mars Mission Launch

pipcorona writes "The principal investigator of the Phoenix Mars Lander Mission released an article yesterday describing how the mission is progressing, talking about landing sites and informing the public that they are officially one year away from launch." From the article: "In parallel with the assembly of the spacecraft, our Payload Interoperability Testbed (PIT) in the Tucson Science Operations Center has been integrating engineering models of all the science instruments. Besides validating the integration procedures for the instruments, this facility will be used to verify that all our instruments work as a team-important since they were developed individually. In particular, the digging of soils and delivery of samples to instruments will be thoroughly tested."

Comments

Tucson, eh?

[r00t]

NASA does something in every state, if not every congressional district.

(see also: Joint Strike Fighter, and -- lest the Europeans gloat -- anything made by Airbus)

Re:Stationary lander makes no sense

[celticryan]

From the overview page of the Phoenix Mars Mission:

The Phoenix Mars Mission, scheduled for launch in August 2007, is the first in NASA's "Scout Program." Scouts are designed to be highly innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions being planned as part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program. Phoenix is specifically designed to measure volatiles (especially water) and complex organic molecules in the arctic plains of Mars, where the Mars Odyssey orbiter has discovered evidence of ice-rich soil very near the surface.

The idea is to have a lower cost mission. Congress is constantly not giving NASA a budget that can support the kind of vision both Scientists and Engineers want from the agency. In addition, the types of experiments that Phoenix is doing only needs a good landing pad. The idea isn't to go and run around the whole polar region and identify every square foot of rock and soil. The purpose is to find a region on the edge of the polar cap that is representative of the average region and test there. If they had an unlimited budget, I am sure the lead scientist and engineer would love to make the project mobile and maybe do this test a multiple sites. This is not the reality of a scientific agency that is constrained by the whims of a fickle public and an overly bureaucratic government.

Re:Stationary lander makes no sense

[Soft]

Why in the heck would we be launching a stationary lander when the Spirit and Opportunity have been roving the surface for over 2 years?

Because they don't have the money for sending new rovers, but they do have enough to launch the old spare of the one that crashed on Mars last decade due to insufficient testing.

Re:What's wrong with us?

[popeye44]

Yep the space program gave us TANG, anyone remember tang? Although that ones kind of lost in the 40,000 other drinks we have now. The space program has given us many many other things, Firefighter protection, smoke alarms, ear thermometers, Joystick controllers and on and on.

Re:Interesting name choice.

[DestroyAllZombies]

It's "Phoenix" because it's the 01 Lander which was not flown. The reason it wasn't flown is because the previous two missions failed. So Phoenix is a pretty good name IMHO. Obligatory wiki link here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Surveyor_2001_La nder