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June 15, 2005
The Phoenix is arising . . .
Scheduled for a March 2007 launch aboard a Delta II rocket, the Phoenix will be headed to Mars to look for water, that ever elusive necessity for human missions to Mars. While astronauts travelling to Mars will bring with them a finite quantity of water. For long term success or eventual colonization of the Martian surface, a method of extracting or producing water must be found.
In 2002 the Mars Odyssey Orbiter discovered significant amounts water trapped beneath the surface of the Martian polar regions and a surface ice cap at the Martian poles. The Phoenix lander intends to investigate this region and actually physically extract some of the subsurface ice and analyze it.
While all the Martian landers and orbiters are important to the long term goals of exploring the solar system, Phoenix serves double duty by specifically being designed to lead the way for a human presence on Mars. The data retrieved from this mission will open up many new research avenues directly related to human survival on Mars. Extra-terrestial agriculture scientists will be able to develop models for the possible transplantation of oxygen producing plants as a first step toward terraforming the planet. Mission planners will be able to have hard data about the ability of astronauts to extract enough water to feed bio-habitats producing food and consumable oxygen on the surface. Such habitats will mean the difference between months long Martian visits and days long visits.
The lander itself is a stationary platform this go round. There won't be any spify videos of little rovers zipping around the surface. Some very impressive technology is being sent up instead of a remote controlled rover, not the least impressive is the spacecraft itself, combining off the shelf, previous mission and brand new engineering. Coupled with a robotic arm and camera, the craft will scoop up material do a depth sufficient to collect ice and water samples. On board analyzers will conduct extensive testing on the samples to give a picture of the polar subsurface makeup.
Special cameras will record the terrain in stereoscopic 3-D giving us some of the best views to date. Additionally a weather station and special imaging devices will record and examine the atmospheric conditions in the region.
All in all, this mission will be the most complete look at what NASA considers to be the prime location for a manned mission landing site. Those scientists and mission controllers working on manned missions to Mars will be using this data as their keystone for building their missions off of.
The key to Mars will be water and power. Power is relatively easy to bring to Mars via fuel cells and solar generation, eventually to be replaced with some sort of nuclear power. Water on the other hand is a problem. Massive quantities will be needed for any long term habitation, far too much for us to transport to Mars and far too heavy to land on the surface. We know that there's water there though, so hopefully Phoenix can get a good look at it and give us some indications of whether or not it's in a condition that we can use easily.
The Phoenix is abandoning the familiar balloon ball landing approach opting instead for a more complicated controlled landing on the surface. You can view an animation of the landing and deployment sequence of by clicking here (will take some time to load).
It's a very exciting mission and I hope there's nothing around the bend that could derail it. Maybe we are actually moving forward as a species just a bit.
--Jason
PS - While I love that we're moving forward with Martian exploration, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if NASA would have run with Wernher Von Braun's 1952 outline of a manned Mars mission by 1965.
Posted by JasonColeman at June 15, 2005 12:57 AM
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