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Mars Phoenix Probe Successfully Launched
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.'"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/04/tech/pri ntable3133675.shtml
Seriously, if you are going to link to an Associated Press article, please link to a version that doesn't require registration to read.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
The first time my eyes skimmed this, I thought I read that it had landed. Bummer. Biggest trial is still yet to come, imo.
Think how many people could have been fed with this money.
$420 million. Enough to buy every person in the US 1 apple. Just one.
Think how many people have been fed with this money. The operative word you're looking for is jobs. Go get one. You might like it.
It seems like all the probes they send up are specifically not looking for life. NASA always says, "oh, we're looking for geological data and evidence of water, but not life", or now, "we're looking for organic compounds, and we're sending up a microscope, but we're really not looking for life".
What's funny is the original Viking mission had a simple test for life. It produced a result that is controversial to this day. Surely in the 30 years since then, they could come up with version 2.0 of some life tests, and fly them? These landers are weighing in the 1,000 lbs range. They can't put in 50lbs of biological test instruments in there somewhere?
I hate to get conspiratorial here, but if there were non-Earth biological life on some other planet, that would not be welcome news to the "no evolution in schools" crowd. Is this crowd preventing Nasa from doing the most interesting thing they should be doing which is looking for microbes on that planet? The other possible reason is they don't want to set expectations, and if they conclusively found no life up there, maybe that would dampen enthusiasm for spending $100bil to send a manned mission?
Dangit, do you have to be so pessmistic ?
Think about how many guns and bombs and other things that actively make peoples lifes miserable will not be bought with this money.
There, you can start cheering now. I'm all for space exploration because it takes money that would otherwise most likely be used for killing people.
See current united states administration as example.