Arctic plains of Mars await Sunday landing
- added May 23, 2008
- 0 responses
-
-
-
- jefftego
- added this
-
-
- related topics
-
- News and Politics (33664)
- News (15687)
- NASA (385)
- Mars (135)
- Space Exploration (39)
When NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander sets down in the Martian arctic on Sunday, it will open a new, icy frontier for scientists back on Earth.
Phoenix, a stationary lander set to make a planned May 25 descent to the Martian surface, is going to where no probe has gone before - the northern plains of Vastitas Borealis on Mars.
"Ten years ago, you wouldn't have chosen this spot at all because it looks just like every other part of Mars," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "A lot of the features aren't even named up there."
But it's the promise of what lies beneath the frozen surface features, signs of untouched Martian water ice first spotted by orbiters in 2002, which spurred NASA engineers and researchers to launch the $420 million Phoenix last August.
Wielding its robotic arm like a backhoe, Phoenix is designed to dig down in to the Martian soil to collect water ice samples. It will feed them into small onboard ovens and beakers to determine if its landing site may have once been habitable for microbial life.
"We believe that the ice is somewhere between 4 and 6 centimeters (1.5 to 2.3 inches) below the surface," Phoenix deputy principal investigator Deborah Bass of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) told SPACE.com. "It's not going to be ice skating rink-pure, white, shiny ice. It's going to be permafrost - dust, dirt and ice all mixed together."
Only one NASA spacecraft - the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander - has ever targeted a polar region of Mars for study, but that spacecraft crashed just before landing near the planet's south pole in December 1999. NASA's past successful Mars landers, the two Viking probes of the 1970s and '80s, and the hardy Spirit and Opportunity rovers that still explore the Martian surface today, set down near the planet's equatorial regions.
The history of Earth's own climate change and the building blocks of life are preserved in the ices near the Arctic Sea, Smith said during a Thursday mission briefing at the Pasadena, Calif.-based JPL.
Phoenix, a stationary lander set to make a planned May 25 descent to the Martian surface, is going to where no probe has gone before - the northern plains of Vastitas Borealis on Mars.
"Ten years ago, you wouldn't have chosen this spot at all because it looks just like every other part of Mars," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "A lot of the features aren't even named up there."
But it's the promise of what lies beneath the frozen surface features, signs of untouched Martian water ice first spotted by orbiters in 2002, which spurred NASA engineers and researchers to launch the $420 million Phoenix last August.
Wielding its robotic arm like a backhoe, Phoenix is designed to dig down in to the Martian soil to collect water ice samples. It will feed them into small onboard ovens and beakers to determine if its landing site may have once been habitable for microbial life.
"We believe that the ice is somewhere between 4 and 6 centimeters (1.5 to 2.3 inches) below the surface," Phoenix deputy principal investigator Deborah Bass of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) told SPACE.com. "It's not going to be ice skating rink-pure, white, shiny ice. It's going to be permafrost - dust, dirt and ice all mixed together."
Only one NASA spacecraft - the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander - has ever targeted a polar region of Mars for study, but that spacecraft crashed just before landing near the planet's south pole in December 1999. NASA's past successful Mars landers, the two Viking probes of the 1970s and '80s, and the hardy Spirit and Opportunity rovers that still explore the Martian surface today, set down near the planet's equatorial regions.
The history of Earth's own climate change and the building blocks of life are preserved in the ices near the Arctic Sea, Smith said during a Thursday mission briefing at the Pasadena, Calif.-based JPL.
Login/Registration is required to add a response.
