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Space Science

Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point 83

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hoping-history-does-not-repeat-itself dept.
It doesn't come easy writes "There is a nice write-up over at Space.com about Phoenix, NASA's next Mars lander. The article includes a few more details about the steps NASA is taking to ensure a successful mission." The Phoenix project was first given the green light earlier this year and hopes to benefit from some hard lessons learned on earlier projects.
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Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point More

Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

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  • They need tricorders (Score:3, Funny)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@y a h o o . c om> on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @05:40PM (#13449208) Homepage Journal
    Great, but if they really want to find signs of life, they need a tricorder. :-)

    Interesting article, though, especially on the steps they're taking not to contaminate the landing site with fuel exhaust and other substances the lander will bring with it. OTOH, it might be interesting if they did some experiments where they purposefully contaminated the landing site, particularly with stuff like "extremophile" organisms that might have a chance at surviving on Mars.

    - Greg

    • Great, but if they really want to find signs of life, they need a tricorder. :-)

      Or a portable DNA Microarray [the-scientist.com] ... which might be a tad more useful, since they already have a portable assay onboard.
      • Not very useful if the life isn't DNA-based. :) I.e., RNA genes and the RNA-world hypothesis for RNA-based life, nanobacteria (unknown mechanism - possibly DNA, possibly RNA, possibly strange self-replicating crystals, etc), self-catalytic protein hypercycles, and possibly other more esoteric forms of life.
        • Not very useful if the life isn't DNA-based. :) I.e., RNA genes and the RNA-world hypothesis for RNA-based life, nanobacteria (unknown mechanism - possibly DNA, possibly RNA, possibly strange self-replicating crystals, etc), self-catalytic protein hypercycles, and possibly other more esoteric forms of life.

          Hence the assay I mentioned looking for the chemicals used to build RNA/DNA (altho I'd hate to try to do Crystallography on mars ....)
    • They should bring cats http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00128/en/cats/ history.htm [thinkquest.org]

      (I like cats BTW but not enough to think that this -http://catsinsinks.com/ [catsinsinks.com]- site is cute )
  • yeah, I guess that's about right.
  • not to mention other building blocks.

    Looks like a useful mission.

    Now if only they could include a robot penguin that hops on it ...
  • Given NASA's track record, isn't it sort of inviting disaster to name your spacecraft "Phoenix"?

    Who wants to be it explodes on entry.
    • Given NASA's track record, isn't it sort of inviting disaster to name your spacecraft "Phoenix"?

      Yeah, because the Borg will come and attack it before you launch.
    • Since the whole purpose of this particular lander is to move dirt around itself, a straight plunge into the ground would be just as effective. If it works for comets, it'll do for planets.
    • One might say that the name is fitting, like a phoenix that has risen from the ashes of a previously failed project.
    • "True to its namesake, Phoenix has risen from the ashes of two unsuccessful attempts to reach Mars: The ill-fated Mars Polar Lander that was lost at the planet in 1999 and a Mars Surveyor Program lander that was cancelled and mothballed in 2000"

  • Why an immobile lander? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by visgoth ( 613861 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @05:50PM (#13449299)
    Why would NASA go with a lander that can't move once its on the surface? Surely the success of the two rovers has proven that its worth the extra complexity to have somthing that can travel. What if the lander ends up in an undesireable area, but there's somthing of interest just out of reach? If you're going through the trouble of building, then launching somthing to go to Mars, you may as well go all out.
    • From The Fine Article:

      The "deck" of the legged lander is 4 feet (1.2 meters) across--about the size of a breakfast table--and is loaded with science equipment.

      It's possible the mission planners did not want to sacrifice instrument weight in favor of wheels and motors.
      • That's probably the reason, but the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are somewhat bigger:

        1.5 meter (4.9 feet) high by 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) wide by 1.6 meter (5.2 feet) long, according to this site [marsinstitute.info].

        I'm thinking NASA is trying to save money by not sending somthing with mobile capability. Its a pity, as the dev work's already been done... may as well use it.

        • Agreed. Having a mobile lander is much better, otherwise it needs to wait for the ice to return to obtain further data. Perhaps the life only appears when ice is present or for just short periods of time after the ice goes away? It certainly would need some kind of snow tires or wheels at least.

        • Re:Why an immobile lander? (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          simple reason: energy. You must've noticed this the last time you filled up, but it costs a bundle to haul stuff around even on wheels with electric motors.

          On mars, the price is in W/m^2 of daytime solar input. And this solar input is significantly less (or significantly more variable) than on the equatorial band... so you might as well spare energy for the instruments.

          Plus of course the actual total mission weight requirements imposed by the choice of launch vehicle and trajectory...
    • The answer should be simple: money, complications, and power requirements. Why waste the probe's lifetime moving when it can test instead?
    • It's all a logical progression:

      Why send humans to space when you can send a probe?
      Why send mobile probes when you can send probes with long range sensors?
      Why send landers when you can just send satellites?
      Why send satellites when you can just observe from Earth?
    • This mission is landing in a more difficult spot, near the pole instead of at the equator like the rovers. It's also on a slightly smaller budger: $350 million instead of $820 million for the 2 rovers (quantity discount included). More importantly, it's goal is not a survey of a broad area of the surface of Mars, but rather a more detailed look at the ground below what Spirit and Opportunity can get to simply by spinning their wheels. It may even directly encounter water ice.

      There's more to it than the abov

  • Subsurface water (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lightyear4 ( 852813 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @05:50PM (#13449301)
    Some [bbc.co.uk] water on the surface of mars has been already detected. However, whether it be frozen or liquid, the search water beneath the regolith is the single most important priority for any manned exploration of our celestial neighbor. Any water present in subsurface acquifers would open the floodgates for progress on mars. It would: provide for human habitation, be a veritable hotbed for xenobiology, and provide the chemical components for fuel cells and even rocket propellant. Our generation needs something exciting as motivation..cross your fingers.
    • It would: provide for human habitation, be a veritable hotbed for xenobiology, and provide the chemical components for fuel cells and even rocket propellant.

      No, it would simply provide a means for crackpot pseudo-scientists to complain about us ruining the precious Martian ecosystem ("Where there's water, there's life! Proof of life on Mars!1!!!").

      Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go register the www.redpeace.org domain to head them off.
    • Well first and formost, we already know that there is water there, in the first of ICE. How much there is, remains to be determined. ICE is plenty good for building habitats. From it, we can get water of which it will provide us with H2 for for combination with C02 to give us methane. Likewise, we get O2 for our needs.

      What the liquid water will really tell us, is there a possibility of Life. Quite honestly, water provides the best chance of life, where as MOST earth bacteria will not grow (salmonella being
  • Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

    I had to look at that one twice. The first time, all I saw was "Phoenix Mars Lander Hits..." and my brain filled in the rest with "Object, Is Lost".

  • I wish they'd include a microphone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xTown ( 94562 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @05:55PM (#13449336)
    I know that they'd rather use the weight for something with an actual scientific purpose, and I know that all it would transmit would be ssshhhsssshhhhhsssshhhh but it would be neat to hear what another planet sounds like. It wouldn't even have to record--just transmit a couple of minutes live.

  • Present Day Life? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoeShmoe950 ( 605274 ) <CrazyNorman@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @05:56PM (#13449342) Homepage
    NASA's next Mars lander, the Phoenix mission, will head for the northern arctic region of the red planet in 2007, not only ready to dig for subsurface water ice but also probe for habitats of present day life. Are they really expecting to find habitats of present day life? If so, what are the chances of such life actually surviving to this day?
    • Are they really expecting to find habitats of present day life? If so, what are the chances of such life actually surviving to this day?

      IANA-NASAS (I am not a NASA Scientist), but I would expect that the odds of finding "present day life" today would be pretty damn good. Finding "life as we know it" or "our current expectation of life" may be less likely, but I wouldn't expect the "present day life" to have died out this morning.

      Unless it had a bad breakfast burrito. Or forgot it's emergency pants. Do

  • halfway, yea, right (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @05:56PM (#13449348)
    It's hit it's halfway point? It hasn't even launched yet! The headline is rather deceptive. Lot of thinks can happen, particularly with a President spending us into poverty and certain to be replaced in a couple of years.
    • See what happens when you forget to do the metric / imperial conversion?
    • It's hit it's halfway point? It hasn't even launched yet! The headline is rather deceptive. Lot of thinks can happen, particularly with a President spending us into poverty and certain to be replaced in a couple of years.

      Well, at least some of what we're spending is on educational measures that hopefully will make sure you can't get a high school degree without knowing how to use "it's" vs. "its" (perhaps you can apply for a grant and learn it anyway).

      Lot of thinks can happen

      But not a lot of "think

      • Re:halfway, yea, right (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rei ( 128717 )
        only congress can change the tax law

        The president, through veto power alone, has at least as much power as congress (if they don't like it, they veto, and congressional supermajorities are very rare). However, it doesn't end there: the administration sets their party's political agenda in congress. As if that's not enough, they have the huge bludgeon of media attention to their statements to help shove it through. Then, their cabinet is in charge of the implementation of the passed legislation. We have
        • The president, through veto power alone, has at least as much power as congress (if they don't like it, they veto, and congressional supermajorities are very rare). However, it doesn't end there: the administration sets their party's political agenda in congress

          But the whole point is that if the majority of the country doesn't like the way that, say, congress is doing things (along partisan lines), the administration will only be able to set the agenda for the minority in the house. That leaves the presi

          • Re:halfway, yea, right (Score:3, Informative)

            by Rei ( 128717 )
            If the president has a minority, that still leaves them with:

            * Veto power (I.e., still a base 50% of control)
            * Introduction of whatever legislation and amendments he wants
            * The "bully pulput" of having all of their talking points reported.
            * The ability to choose how to enforce all of the details of legislation that gets passed which aren't explicitly stated or are open to interpretation.

            I.e., the office of the president, even in a minority-party situation, is the biggest infl
          • big ticket items, like opening or closing bases

            Lysdexious me read this as opening and closing braces (not the kind that Lisa needs), and wondered why they are big ticket items.

            Then, looking at coders' salaries and the number of braces that end up in their correct location in code, I realized they really are.

    • It's hit it's halfway point? It hasn't even launched yet!

      It's the Phoenix Mars Lander. It's currently Landed in Phoenix, so that's 2/3 the way there!

  • Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point (Score:4, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @06:19PM (#13449506)
    and quits NASA after deciding the idea of being strapped to a load of explosives and blasted off into the freezing vacuum of space to a god forsaken planet has little or no appeal. In other news the NASA AI team are flogged and then fired.

  • Well... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder how the Chinee feel about it.
  • I find the idea of continued Mars expoloration exciting and would like to eventually see people land on Mars.

  • How soon (Score:2, Funny)

    by GWBasic ( 900357 )
    How soon until they rename it the Firefox project?

  • If we're building a robot out of discarded parts.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stanistani ( 808333 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @06:47PM (#13449700) Homepage Journal
    ... then I say we call it GIR [wikipedia.org]...
  • How many will they put on that planet before realizing that it's going to hit a rock and get stuck?
    But seriously, let's wish the Phoenix luck, it will need it with all of that burning down to ashes and reincarnating itself that will be doing these next few years. (:
  • We simply need to send people to Mars. :-)
    • We simply need to send people to Mars. :-)

      You might want to set up some supplies of potable water, edible food, breathable atmosphere, energy stores, and some living quarters first.

  • One way to protect its success from catastrophic failure: no human crew. That way, NASA's continued cost-reduction corner-cutting, and premature launches for media windows, will mean that no one will watch the video if it scuttles on Mars landing in a bang.

  • No liquid water? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scdeimos ( 632778 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @08:16PM (#13450282)

    From the article:

    "Mars is our sister planet. It's small, cold and no liquid on the surface ... however, we do see water in its frozen form," Smith reported.

    and...

    Touching down inside the arctic circle, just before summer on Mars and at the end of spring, ice will have retreated from the area. "We're going to land on dry soil. We can start digging immediately," Smith said.

    If the ice is retreating in spring/summer then it's melting, right? Where's the liquid water going?

    • Water ice doesn't melt on Mars - it simply evaporates, like "dry ice" (CO2) does here.
      The atmospheric pressure on Mars is just a little too low to allow liquid water to exist.

    • Re:No liquid water? (Score:5, Informative)

      by lorelorn ( 869271 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @09:40PM (#13450766)
      Water doesn't melt on Mars- it can't due to low pressure.

      It sublimes, which means that it goes directly from a solid to a gas.

      This is more to do with pressure than temperature-it doesn't mean the ice is melting becasue it's 200 kelvin or anything.

    • Re:No liquid water? (Score:5, Informative)

      by lightyear4 ( 852813 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2005 @10:11PM (#13450938)
      If you were on earth, that might be the case. Several factors are at work here: Earth's air pressure at sea level is 14 lb/in (1015ish millibars); on the other hand, martian atmospheric pressures are more on the order of 5 millibars. Thats damned low. Aside from that, you have an exceptionally arid atmosphere and most of the ice on mars is actually CO2. Add all of this together and the ice doesnt even have a chance to melt; it simply sublimes away into the atmosphere.
  • phoenix lander launch cancelled due to rising fuel costs.
  • Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point

    Dammit! I said go left!

  • Once free of a parachute, Phoenix will depend upon an "ease on down" propulsion system that was last utilized on the failed Mars Polar Lander mission.

    Why?? Why use a system that has no success history instead of using a system that has succeeded 3 times already?

    I just don't get it.
  • Many of the scientific instruments for Phoenix were already built, needing little or no modification for Mars duties......The "deck" of the legged lander is 4 feet (1.2 meters) across--about the size of a breakfast table--and is loaded with science equipment.

    You know, the lander *does* look like a breakfast table. Maybe the NASA budget problems are worse than we thought, and they had to use furniture from the break room.
         

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