Sat, Feb 03, 2007
Phoenix Scheduled To Launch In August
Finding a place to park in the city -- or, a crowded airport
ramp -- is an issue nearly all of us have experienced at one
time or another. It's also a problem for scientists
at NASA who are rushing to find an alternative landing site for an
upcoming Mars probe.
The Associated Press reports images taken by the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter of the planned landing site for the space
agency's Phoenix Mars lander showed an unwelcome surprise: large,
bus-sized boulders all over the place. Not the most hospitable
environment for a $400 million space probe.
Peter Smith of the University of Arizona is NASA's principal
investigator on the Phoenix project. He says scientists are
studying three possible alternative landing sites, all of which are
clustered around Mars' north pole -- an area thought to hold a
significant amount of ice just under the soil. Phoenix is equipped
with a long drilling arm to collect samples of that soil.
"This is the first mission to actually reach down and get a
handful of icy soil and analyze it," Smith said, adding a site
dubbed 'Green Valley' for its shallow dip in the Martian surface
appears most promising.
Scientists will need to come to a decision soon. Phoenix -- the
first probe in NASA's unmanned Mars Scout program -- is set to
launch in August. A ruling on a landing site needs to be made by
March. Due to the unforeseen delay in finding a suitable landing
site, the $386 million project has gone over budget by about $31
million.
Lockheed Martin built the probe, which was originally set to fly
as part of the Mars Global Surveyor program in 2001. However, the
program was halted when the Mars Polar Lander mysteriously
disappeared in 1999.
A NASA investigation later determined that loss was due to a
premature shutoff of the Polar Lander's engine... and Phoenix
received a new chance to fly.
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