NASA's Phoenix Lander Made from Recycled Parts

NASA's Phoenix Lander which blasted off last Saturday at the Cape Carnival Air Force Base at 5:26 a.m. EDT, was said to be originally part of the 2001 Mars Surveyor Program. The original spacecraft was built and tested to fly with the Mars Polar Lander mission but it was subsequently shelved after the loss of the Surveyor. The spacecraft was renamed Phoenix, after the mythological bird that rose out of the fire to be reborn.

The University of Arizona was selected to lead this mission in 2003 as part of NASA's competitively proposed Mars Scout Missions. The Phoenix underwent numerous rigorous tests to ensure successful landing. Ed Sedivy, Phoenix spacecraft program manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, , which built the spacecraft said, "The testing approach runs the spacecraft and integrated instruments through actual mission sequences, allowing us to asses the entire system through the life of the mission while here on Earth."

The Phoenix Mars Lander is expected to arrive at the Red Planet on May 25, 2008 and if all goes well, it would land on the planet's northern polar region.

The Phoenix will rely on thrusters to bring it to a stop on the Martian surface. According to New Scientist, if everything went according to plan, this will be the first time a robotic rover will land using this method since Viking 1 and 2 Probes that landed on Mars 30 years ago. NASA's Mars Polar Lander that crashed on the Martian surface in 1999 due to a mechanical failure was designed to also land using thrusters.

Associated Press reports that NASA chose a landing site just below the planet's northern polar region that contains both ice and soil since landing right on the Red Planet's North Pole would have been too cold for the robot to operate.

NASA stated that the Phoenix will be the first Lander to touch water ice on Mars. Its robotic arm will dig through the soil to reach an icy layer. The mission's aim is to study the history of water in the ice, monitor the weather conditions in the polar region, and investigate whether the northern regions of Mars could have once sustained microbial life. The soil and ice sample collected will be analyzed by computers on the robot's deck. A tiny oven on the lander will heat soil and examine the vapors that are given off to check for water and carbon-containing compounds. Another test will mix water with soil samples to analyze the dissolution products. The probe also contains a weather station that can provide information about the different atmospheric processes on Mar's arctic region. So far, there have been 15 attempts to land Probes on the Martian surface by the US, Russia, and Europe but only 5 succeeded. The cost of the Phoenix mission is $420 million.

SOURCE:

NASA, NASA Spacecraft Heads for Polar Region on Mars. URL: (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/releases/2007/release-20070804.html)

Marcia Dunn, Reborn Phoenix lander wings its way to Mars. Associated Press. URL: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20112679/)

Maggie Mckee and David Shiga, Phoenix Lander blasts off to Mars. NewScientist.com. URL: (http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12422-phoenix-lander-blasts-off-to-mars.html)