Phoenix Mission Successfully Completes Historic Landing on Mars' Arctic Plain

"Phoenix has the scientific capability to change our thinking about the origins of life on other worlds,"

~Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona A Lunar and Planetary Laboratory  and head of the Phoenix mission.

NASA’s Phoenix Lander has just completed its touchdown on the frigid northern arctic plain of Mars, using a set of rocket thrusters to slow down its descent. The maneuver was last successfully employed by the Viking landers in the 1970s. Polar Lander, which was scheduled to touch down in 1999, tried it and crashed. NASA says Phoenix has risen from the ashes of the Polar Lander mission and has been fine-tuned to succeed where its predecessor failed.

Unlike the roving Spirit and Opportunity, the Phoenix won't be able to move around.  Instead, its final destination was chosen before it ever left Earth, and over its entire four hundred million mile journey the lander has been aiming at one precise point - a feat which requires some careful calculation and navigation.  While the Rovers were designed as lightweight scouts to get out and about, the immobile Phoenix lander acts more like a survey station.  The heavier design means it can carry many more tools, including a robotic arm which will dig over a meter into the Martian soil (where there is believed to be an eighty per cent chance of finding life-giving H20).  Other heavy duty science equipment include a mass spectrometer, an atomic force microscope, incredibly sensitive cameras for on-site analysis, and large solar panels to power the systems.

One drawback of landing is obvious: you mess up the one spot on the entire planet you're going to looking at by dropping three hundred and fifty kilograms of spacecraft on it.  In fact, if you don't want your probe's examination of the surface to be extremely brief and alarmingly dynamic, you have to fire landing thrusters into that ground as well (Phoenix will be traveling over twenty thousand kilometers an hour on its way to Mars, slightly faster than ideal for landing!).  To counter this the Phoenix is equipped to take high resolution images of the surface just before landing.  Also, the landing thrusters use a very specific fuel mixture which scientists can screen out of any results (because unless is significantly more flammable than heretofore believed, there isn't any hydrazine in the soil).  Finally, the most interesting samples to be gained will be those excavated from under the surface, where they should remain free of thruster contamination.

In the following week, Express will monitor Phoenix using MELACOM 14 more times; at least one of these will be used to demonstrate and confirm that the ESA spacecraft can be used as a data relay station for NASA, receiving data from the surface and transmitting test commands to the lander.

In the days leading up to the Phoenix landing, NASA and ESA ground stations also cooperated to perform highly sophisticated 'delta-DOR' (delta - Differential One-way Range) interferometry measurements. This enabled a precise determination of whether Phoenix was on track to meet the planned entry point, using
equipment installed at the Agency's two deep-space tracking stations, in Cebreros, Spain, and New Norcia, Australia.

If all goes as planned the Phoenix will  spend three months digging into the frozen soil and ice, and analyzing the samples in miniature ovens and labs looking for traces of organic compounds in the baked and moistened samples. The 772-pound lander will stretch 18 feet across once its solar panels are deployed, and its weather mast will extend seven feet.

As recent research in the Arctic and Antarctic regions on Earth have shown, if organic compounds are present on Mars, they're more likely to have been preserved in ice, which  why NASA is aiming for the planet's high northern plains, where about six inches of soft red soil should cover the ice, and so the digger shouldn't have to probe too deeply.

Phoenix has the scientific capability "to change our thinking about the origins of life on other worlds," according to Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona A Lunar and Planetary Laboratory  and head of the Phoenix mission. "Even though the northern plains are thought to be too cold now for water to exist as a liquid, periodic variations in the Martian orbit allow a warmer climate to develop every 50,000 years. During these periods the ice can melt, dormant organisms could come back to life, (if there are indeed any), and evolution can proceed. Our mission will verify whether the northern plains are indeed a last viable habitat on Mars."

LPL Director Michael J. Drake said, "Phoenix has the potential to be the smoking gun for the evolution of life elsewhere in the universe. While it will not directly seek to detect life, it will look for complex organic molecules. If they are there, they are hinting strongly at present or past life.

"Detection of complex organics will drive all future exploration, and the Lunar and Planetary Lab will play a prominent role. The discovery that we are not alone in the universe, that science fiction of Star Trek may in fact be science fact, will change the way humanity thinks about itself. The existence of even primitive life forms on Mars raises the probability of advanced life elsewhere, and emphasizes our commonality rather than our differences."

Only five of the 15 U.S., Russian and European attempts have worked, all of them American successes beginning with the 1976 Viking touchdowns.

This was NASA's first attempt to land a spacecraft on 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 orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix -- named after the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.

Phoenix landed at 68.35 degrees north latitude, comparable to Greenland or northern Alaska, and 233 degrees east longitude. The lander parachuted down to a target landing area that is "Kansas flat,", with pulse thrusters easing its final descent with few if any big rocks that could overturn the stationary three-legged lander or bump against its circular solar panels and jam them.

Phoenix should help pave the way for human visitors, especially if it confirms the presence of water ice in large amounts near the pole, said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist. That would be a tremendous resource, he noted. But if organic matter is indeed found, it could pose a quandary: "As gets more interesting, you may not want to send humans right away until you learn out a little bit more about the red planet and find out whether or not life ever got started there."

Attached to the deck of the lander is "The Phoenix DVD" , the first library on compiled by the Planetary Society made of a special silica glass designed to withstand the Martian environment, lasting for hundreds if not thousands of years on the surface while it awaits discoverers.

The disc contains Visions of Mars, a multimedia collection of literature and art about the Red Planet. Works include the text of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds (and its infamous radio broadcast by Orson Welles), Percival Lowell's as the Abode of Life with a map of his proposed canals, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, and Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Mars. There are also messages directly addressed to future Martian visitors or settlers from, among others, Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke. In the Fall of 2006, The Planetary Society collected a quarter million names submitted through the internet and placed them on the disc.

Posted by Casey Kazan with Luke McKinney.

Comments

[Barrie O'Leary]

This accomplishment leaves me speechless. Congratulations, U.S.A. Congratulations NASA!

[saudi]

Congratulations, U.S.A. Congratulations NASA!

i wished to see a little flage waving and to show the marsian wend.

[Tracy Sheridan]

Phoenix Mars Lander is even twittering progress + interesting updates, and streaming video and images.

Phoenix also has the best Twitter one-liner bio, yet:

"I dig Mars!"

http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

:)

[saudi]

Ohhh, If USA can only be impatial,fair and Just in the Middle east conflect, and treating all parties equally and justly! but even though, we cannot hide our admiration to the USA and great people's acheivment in since and technology.