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Mars Phoenix Probe Successfully Launched

Posted by Zonk on Sat Aug 04, 2007 01:36 PM
from the fly-little-birdie dept.
Mars Space NASA Science
necro81 writes "The Mars Phoenix lander, built from the ashes of two earlier Mars missions, successfully launched atop a Delta II rocket from Canaveral this morning. The mission takes the 350-kg lander to northern latitudes (comparable to Greenland or Siberia) to investigate subsurface ice for the chemical precursors of life. The lander should arrive on Mars on May 25, 2008. 'NASA has never attempted to land a spacecraft on Mars 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 Mars orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.'"
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[+] Spirit Outlasts Viking 2 Lander 137 comments
ScottMaxwell writes "Spirit, the Mars rover designed for a 90-day mission, has now outlasted the Viking 2 lander. Viking 2 survived until its 1281st sol (Martian day); Spirit is now on sol 1282 and counting. Assuming both rovers continue to weather the ongoing dust storms, Spirit's sister, Opportunity, will reach the same age in a few weeks. They aren't breathing down the neck of the all-time record just yet, though — the Viking 1 lander lasted 2245 sols on the surface of Mars; Spirit and Opportunity won't break that record for another 2.7 Earth years."
[+] NASA Selects Landing Site for Phoenix Mars Lander 39 comments
Earlier this week, NASA made a course adjustment for its Phoenix Mars Lander which puts it on a path to land in "Green Valley" on the Red Planet late next month. The site was chosen for being a broad, flat expanse that is relatively free of rocks capable of damaging the lander when it sets down. The location will be confirmed pending further reconnaissance from an orbiting satellite. The probe's mission, which we've previously discussed, is to investigate subsurface ice. "The landing area is an ellipse about 62 miles by about 12 miles (100 kilometers by 20 kilometers). Researchers have mapped more than five million rocks in and around that ellipse, each big enough to end the mission if hit by the spacecraft during landing. Knowing where to avoid the rockier areas, the team has selected a scientifically exciting target that also offers the best chances for the spacecraft to set itself down safely onto the Martian surface."
[+] How NASA Will Bring the Phoenix Mars Mission To the Web 60 comments
lgmac brings us a story about how NASA will bring information from the Phoenix Mars lander to the internet in the coming days. CIO Magazine speaks with JPL's chief knowledge architect and others about how they'll provide massive amounts of data from the lander to suit the needs of an audience ranging from professors to 8-year-olds. We've been discussing the Phoenix mission for quite a while now. The landing is on schedule for Sunday at roughly 5PM PDT. "'In previous missions, a system like this didn't exist and people were sharing images via external drives,' Bitter says. Some of the images are put up immediately and captioned, or sent to museum audiences, while others are made part of huge mosaic pictures that display the majesty of what the NASA spacecraft encounters, she says. In addition to the sheer volume of data that must be sifted through, challenges included the large, dispersed team, Holm says. 'The content management system has to be easy to use and agnostic,' she says, 'It's all about speed and accuracy of data.' Video on the Web represents one of the biggest changes for modern-day missions for the public, Holm says. 'There's a visceral response we get from people. They feel like they're really there.'"
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Mars Phoenix Probe Successfully Launched 50 Comments More /

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  • http://www.thefreedictionary.com/allude [thefreedictionary.com]

    allude (-ld)
    intr.v. alluded, alluding, alludes
    To make an indirect reference: The candidate alluded to the recent war by saying, "We've all made sacrifices."
    [Latin alldere, to play with : ad-, ad- + ldere, to play (from ldus, game; see leid- in Indo-European roots).]
    Usage Note: Allude and allusion are often used where the more general terms refer and reference would be preferable. Allude and allusion normally apply to indirect references in which the source is not spec

  • Canadian Content (Score:5, Informative)

    by zapwow (939754) on Saturday August 04 2007, @01:52PM (#20114857)
    Included on the lander is a Canadian-built weather station.
    http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/04/mars -lander.html [www.cbc.ca]

    • Re:Canadian Content (Score:5, Informative)

      by tomduck (897600) on Saturday August 04 2007, @04:11PM (#20115807) Homepage
      The Canadian contribution to the mission is a meteorological station that includes a pressure sensor, three temperature sensors on a mast, a wind telltale, and a lidar (laser radar) system. The lidar will be used to obtain profiles of dust in the atmosphere, and uses a technique very similar to radar or sonar but using pulses of laser light instead. We use lidar systems here on Earth to profile aerosols, ozone, clouds, etc here on earth. The Can con will be complemented by other instruments for atmospheric measurements, including the Stereoscopic Surface Imager (SSI) which will take pictures of the sky through a variety of filters, and the MECA which will measure water vapour. You can read more about the Phoenix instruments at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/science05.php [arizona.edu]. This programme, as all space programmes are, is massively collaborative. It is a partnership between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and other international contributors. Peter Smith from the University of Arizona is the Science Team lead. On the Canadian side the Science Team is composed of researchers from York University, Dalhousie University, University of Alberta, and the Geological Survey of Canada. The meteorological station was built by MDA (who also built the Canadarm), Optech and Passat. The launch this morning was quite a thrill. As someone else pointed out, the most challenging part is yet to come: the descent. The landing is very ambitious, with multiple stages including parachutes and retro-rockets. Good fun.
      • Are you Tom Duck from Dalhousie? I've heard of you, I am in the space program at York.
        • Yes, that's me. York is developing a nice space programme, which I am sure you are enjoying. I'm a York alumnus myself, and have collaborated with the Canadian lead on Phoenix (Jim Whiteway, York U) for a long time. I'm now at Dalhousie University, and you can read about our contribution to Phoenix at http://mars.dal.ca/ [mars.dal.ca].
    • Included on the lander is a Canadian-built weather station.

      Martain Skeptic: "I told you it was just a weather balloon!"
           
  • Does any one know if on Mars the North Pole actually the south seeking pole (as on earth) or is it a real north seeking pole like we are used to in bar magnets etc?
    • Its seems that a directional magnetic field may be immaterial [64.233.169.104]

    • Re:North Pole? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ironsides (739422) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:10PM (#20114983) Homepage Journal
      The Marssian North Pole is in reference to the geographical north pole, not the magnetic. The Marssian magnetic field is so week as to be non existent.

      • Re:North Pole? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tomduck (897600) on Saturday August 04 2007, @04:36PM (#20115997) Homepage
        The absence of a magnetic field on mars has some interesting consequences. Since Mars and Earth were formed from the same material, it is very surprising that Mars doesn't have oceans. One of the theories is that the solar wind of particles from the sun carried away the atmosphere, and so the oceans just evaporated away until it became so cold the remaining water froze into the polar ice caps. Recent estimates indicate that Mars loses some 100 tons of atmosphere every day. The Earth is protected from the solar wind by its magnetosphere, which results from the magnetic field. Mars's magnetic field, on the other hand, disappeared some 4 Billion years ago when the planet's core cooled off.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by ivanwillsau (709482)
          If Mars has no magnetic field what determines North?

          • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            The rotation of the planet and the right-hand rule.
        • "One of the theories is that the solar wind of particles from the sun carried away the atmosphere, and so the oceans just evaporated away until it became so cold the remaining water froze into the polar ice caps. Recent estimates indicate that Mars loses some 100 tons of atmosphere every day. The Earth is protected from the solar wind by its magnetosphere, which results from the magnetic field."

          Hmmm... I have a question: Let's say that theory is correct. Would it be possible to pick a decent sized crate

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by tomduck (897600)

            Hmmm... I have a question: Let's say that theory is correct. Would it be possible to pick a decent sized crater on Mars, drop tons and tons and tons of breathable air in it, then artificially create a magnetic field around it to keep it from escaping?

            Unfortunately, no. While a localized magnetic field might help to keep charged particles out, it wouldn't keep the atmosphere in. Some ideas to crate a breathable atmosphere include creating a biosphere dome [wikipedia.org] and terraforming [wikipedia.org] the planet, although a lot of

        • One of the Potentials of Geothermal Power [slashdot.org] is that we lose our atmosphere on this planet to solar winds as well.
  • Here's what happened to the missing Mars Polar Lander: http://youtube.com/watch?v=x_iPvUWyzhE [youtube.com]

    - Heineken fanboi

  • Unwelcome visitors! (Score:5, Funny)

    by kiberovca (524346) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:23PM (#20115095)
    Puny humans! This one will go silent too! Not only you don't ask for permission to visit, but you also pollute our water supply with useless noisy junk!

    This time, not even Tom Cruise will save you!
  • It would be really cool if it found a frozen mammoth like this one [wikipedia.org]. Of course it also has an equal chance at drilling-through to the inner sanctuary of the Q Continuum [memory-alpha.org] while there on Mars.

    • It would be really cool if it found a frozen mammoth like this one.
      It wouldn't be too cool if we found a frozen alien mammoth like this [imdb.com] one!

  • Phoenix (Score:3, Funny)

    by dsanfte (443781) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:51PM (#20115307) Journal
    Thank you for explaining what a Phoenix is. I had always assumed it was the name of a web browser.

  • CBS coverage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous McCartneyf (1037584) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:57PM (#20115351) Homepage Journal
    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/04/tech/pri ntable3133675.shtml [cbsnews.com]
    Seriously, if you are going to link to an Associated Press article, please link to a version that doesn't require registration to read.

  • Video of the launch (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's already a video of the launch on youtube!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0X1FoyLRGY [youtube.com]

    Good stuff. Someday I have to see a launch in person, it's got to be impressive

  • Disappointed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gertlex (722812) on Saturday August 04 2007, @03:37PM (#20115625)
    The first time my eyes skimmed this, I thought I read that it had landed. Bummer. Biggest trial is still yet to come, imo.

  • NASA Phoenix interview (Score:3, Informative)

    by Iddo Genuth (903542) on Saturday August 04 2007, @03:43PM (#20115655) Homepage
    We have just published yesterday our comprehensive article/interview with NASA on the Phoenix - you can find it here: Phoenix interview [tfot.info]

  • Deja vu all over again (Score:3, Informative)

    by Deadstick (535032) on Saturday August 04 2007, @03:57PM (#20115745)
    The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.'"

    Likewise the AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, built on the technology developed for the AIM-47 which never went operational because the two aircraft it was designed for didn't either.

    rj

    • Of course, then there's the phoenix in the Harry Potter series, named Fawkes ... ... after the guy who tried to blow up Parliament.

      Not a very good omen, I think!

  • Why don't they send some probe to look for life? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It seems like all the probes they send up are specifically not looking for life. NASA always says, "oh, we're looking for geological data and evidence of water, but not life", or now, "we're looking for organic compounds, and we're sending up a microscope, but we're really not looking for life".

    What's funny is the original Viking mission had a simple test for life. It produced a result that is controversial to this day. Surely in the 30 years since then, they could come up with version 2.0 of some life t
    • The Scout missions are actually small, "lower-cost" missions. All of the instruments riding on Phoenix are tiny. Take, for example, the lidar (laser radar) system. On Earth these systems weigh many hundreds of kilograms. The one going to Mars weighs only 6.5 kg. Fitting a capable instrument into such a small package was no small task! One of the things that Phoenix will try to do is be the first to "taste the water". There are many indirect detections of water from radars, spectrometers and the like
    • The problem is that detecting life remotely has proven a difficult task. It is hard to rule out soil chemistry, and we don't know enough about potential Martian microbes to target their signs. Even if there was life, tests may create the same kind of controversies that Viking did. Only microscopic views of life wiggling around would be definitative evidence, but that would be an expensive mission, especially if microbes are small and sparse. (The left-right test has promise, but even that is not definative.
    • It has been discovered that there are microbes on earth that can survive in space.
      It is possible that some of those microbes have been sent into space before we knew they could survive there. We've sent things to Mars for decades.
      So, it is possible that there is life on Mars, but we put it there.
  • Space exploration is risky business, and there have been about as many successful missions to Mars as failures. An account of the fate of each mission to Mars is given in the hilarious Mars Scorecard [anl.gov]. Fortunately, all of the missions in the new millenium have been pretty successful, and so we are very hopeful for Phoenix.

  • It is not the launch that is the problem... (Score:3, Informative)

    by flyingfsck (986395) on Saturday August 04 2007, @06:18PM (#20116597)
    With Mars, it seems that the arrival is a far more delicate maneuver, so we'll see what happens when it eventually gets there. Will this be another bull's eye? Splattttt!!! or a more dignified descent followed by the sounds of silence? or maybe, just maybe, it's going to work this time? More news in 9 months...

  • Landing animation and commentary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tomduck (897600) on Saturday August 04 2007, @06:46PM (#20116801) Homepage

    This animation [www.dal.ca] from Maas Digital shows that the planned landing of Phoenix is very ambitious. As the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere it is protected by a heat shield. Notice the ice cap on the northern pole, which was constructed from images from the Mars Global Surveyor. A parachute will be used to slow the descent, but because the atmosphere is so thin, it will still be going *very* fast. You can see clouds in the background, which were also seen from orbit by MGS.

    A key event happens after the parachute and heat shield rip away: the landing gear deploys, and then the retro-rockets kick in. One problem with the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander was that the sequence of the last two events was reversed. An on-board sensor felt a jolt as when the landing gear locked in and assumed that the landing had taken place. The engines were shut off and the spacecraft plummeted to ground. So close...

    It is very difficult to test landing procedures here on Earth. The gravity on Mars is only a third of what we have, and a simulation is never as good as testing in realistic conditions.

  • Too bad the original Polar Lander wasn't a "Phoenix".
  • "A glass CD loaded with literary, visual and audio science fiction works about the red planet was strapped to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. said Friday."
    :
    "Inlcluded in the works are H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds,"..." http://www.space.com/news/070804_phoenix_spacelibr ary.html [space.com]

    Now THAT'S just going to give the Martian ideas... and they'll probably get their vaccinations before invading this time. Bad enough that we put road maps to Earth on Pioneer an
  • 100 Feet = 30.48 Meters. Just in case you were wondering.
  • The summary mentions that the name is derived from the mythical phoenix, but this is only part of the story. The probe - the first to be launched as part of NASA's low cost "scout" program - was led by the University of Arizona. It's safe to guess that Phoenix also refers to the capital of the arid state. I wonder if I'm the only one who keeps confusing the leadership of this mission with the ubiquitous University of Phoenix.

    For this and more information on the Phoenix mission, see the mission page [arizona.edu].

    • Re:Great. Just great. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YrWrstNtmr (564987) on Saturday August 04 2007, @04:12PM (#20115817)
      Think how many people could have been fed with this money.

      $420 million. Enough to buy every person in the US 1 apple. Just one.
      Think how many people have been fed with this money. The operative word you're looking for is jobs. Go get one. You might like it.

    • Re:Great. Just great. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ihlosi (895663) on Saturday August 04 2007, @04:40PM (#20116019)
      Think how many people could have been fed with this money.



      Dangit, do you have to be so pessmistic ?


      Think about how many guns and bombs and other things that actively make peoples lifes miserable will not be bought with this money.


      There, you can start cheering now. I'm all for space exploration because it takes money that would otherwise most likely be used for killing people.

    • Think how many people could have been fed with this money.
      Or we could replace just one bridge over the Mississippi River... quite frankly I'm glad they're spending it on Mars, but I'm not commuting to work in Minneapolis. I think space missions are getting cheaper relative to bridges, too.
    • The poor will always be with us. If you feed them now, more of them will die worse later... In short no good has ever resulted from wasting resources on feeding the poor. Finding them jobs is a much better idea.

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