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Mars Phoenix Probe Successfully Launched

Posted by Zonk on from the fly-little-birdie dept.

necro81 writes "The Mars Phoenix lander, built from the ashes of two earlier Mars missions, successfully launched atop a Delta II rocket from Canaveral this morning. The mission takes the 350-kg lander to northern latitudes (comparable to Greenland or Siberia) to investigate subsurface ice for the chemical precursors of life. The lander should arrive on Mars on May 25, 2008. 'NASA has never attempted to land a spacecraft on Mars at such a high northern latitude. A lander intended for the red planet's South Pole went silent immediately upon arrival in 1999. That failure, combined with the loss of the companion Mars orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.'"

13 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Canadian Content by zapwow · · Score: 5, Informative

    Included on the lander is a Canadian-built weather station.
    http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/04/mars -lander.html

    1. Re:Canadian Content by wigaloo · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Canadian contribution to the mission is a meteorological station that includes a pressure sensor, three temperature sensors on a mast, a wind telltale, and a lidar (laser radar) system. The lidar will be used to obtain profiles of dust in the atmosphere, and uses a technique very similar to radar or sonar but using pulses of laser light instead. We use lidar systems here on Earth to profile aerosols, ozone, clouds, etc here on earth. The Can con will be complemented by other instruments for atmospheric measurements, including the Stereoscopic Surface Imager (SSI) which will take pictures of the sky through a variety of filters, and the MECA which will measure water vapour. You can read more about the Phoenix instruments at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/science05.php. This programme, as all space programmes are, is massively collaborative. It is a partnership between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and other international contributors. Peter Smith from the University of Arizona is the Science Team lead. On the Canadian side the Science Team is composed of researchers from York University, Dalhousie University, University of Alberta, and the Geological Survey of Canada. The meteorological station was built by MDA (who also built the Canadarm), Optech and Passat. The launch this morning was quite a thrill. As someone else pointed out, the most challenging part is yet to come: the descent. The landing is very ambitious, with multiple stages including parachutes and retro-rockets. Good fun.

  2. Re:North Pole? by Ironsides · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Marssian North Pole is in reference to the geographical north pole, not the magnetic. The Marssian magnetic field is so week as to be non existent.

    --
    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
  3. Video of the launch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's already a video of the launch on youtube!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0X1FoyLRGY

    Good stuff. Someday I have to see a launch in person, it's got to be impressive

  4. NASA Phoenix interview by Iddo+Genuth · · Score: 2, Informative

    We have just published yesterday our comprehensive article/interview with NASA on the Phoenix - you can find it here: Phoenix interview

  5. Deja vu all over again by Deadstick · · Score: 2, Informative
    The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.'"

    Likewise the AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, built on the technology developed for the AIM-47 which never went operational because the two aircraft it was designed for didn't either.

    rj

  6. Re:Why don't they send some probe to look for life by wigaloo · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Scout missions are actually small, "lower-cost" missions. All of the instruments riding on Phoenix are tiny. Take, for example, the lidar (laser radar) system. On Earth these systems weigh many hundreds of kilograms. The one going to Mars weighs only 6.5 kg. Fitting a capable instrument into such a small package was no small task! One of the things that Phoenix will try to do is be the first to "taste the water". There are many indirect detections of water from radars, spectrometers and the like. Phoenix will actually try to scoop some ice up and will analyze it on-board. As far as we know, water is essential for life, and so this is a big step. The same instruments will also try to detect organic matter, which *is* a test for life (either past or present).

  7. Re:Why don't they send some probe to look for life by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem is that detecting life remotely has proven a difficult task. It is hard to rule out soil chemistry, and we don't know enough about potential Martian microbes to target their signs. Even if there was life, tests may create the same kind of controversies that Viking did. Only microscopic views of life wiggling around would be definitative evidence, but that would be an expensive mission, especially if microbes are small and sparse. (The left-right test has promise, but even that is not definative.)

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  8. Re:North Pole? by wigaloo · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is a fascinating story on the accidental discovery that Mars once had a magnetic field.

  9. Re:North Pole? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The rotation of the planet and the right-hand rule.

  10. History of Mars Exploration by wigaloo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Space exploration is risky business, and there have been about as many successful missions to Mars as failures. An account of the fate of each mission to Mars is given in the hilarious Mars Scorecard. Fortunately, all of the missions in the new millenium have been pretty successful, and so we are very hopeful for Phoenix.

  11. It is not the launch that is the problem... by flyingfsck · · Score: 2, Informative

    With Mars, it seems that the arrival is a far more delicate maneuver, so we'll see what happens when it eventually gets there. Will this be another bull's eye? Splattttt!!! or a more dignified descent followed by the sounds of silence? or maybe, just maybe, it's going to work this time? More news in 9 months...

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  12. Re:North Pole? by wigaloo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hmmm... I have a question: Let's say that theory is correct. Would it be possible to pick a decent sized crater on Mars, drop tons and tons and tons of breathable air in it, then artificially create a magnetic field around it to keep it from escaping?

    Unfortunately, no. While a localized magnetic field might help to keep charged particles out, it wouldn't keep the atmosphere in. Some ideas to crate a breathable atmosphere include creating a biosphere dome and terraforming the planet, although a lot of technological development is still needed in both cases.