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Live coverage of Phoenix landing on Mars, tonight, 6 PM EDT |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Sunday, 25 May 2008
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 NASA's Phoenix lander is targeted to touch down on Mars' northern polar region at 7:53 PM EDT. The landing will be carried live (albeit with a delay from the interplanetary broadcast) on NASA TV starting at 6:00 PM. Phoenix will be the first rocket-powered lander since the Viking probes in 1976. The lander will be a stationary craft, unlike the Mars Exploration Rovers closer to the equator, and will primarily be used to search for water ice under the Martian soil.
Confirmation of atmospheric entry is expected to be recieved on Earth at 7:46 PM, with a confirmation of landing at 7:53 PM. Just before touchdown, Phoenix will pivot so that it will have optimal solar alignment; once landed it will not be able to adjust its positioning for better exposure in the northern latitudes. Because the rocket-powered landing will kick up a large amount of dust, Phoenix will not unfurl its circular solar arrays or deploy the camera mast until 9:30 PM.
Phoenix is carrying with it a number of scientific instruments that it will use to probe the Martian soil in search of the ice that scientists have calculated exists only a few inches below the surface. Foremost among them is a long robotic arm capable of digging up to half a meter into the soil. The arm comes with a mounted camera that will be used to study both the retrieved samples and the hole left behind. Those samples will be put through the "Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer", essentially a high-temperature furnace coupled with a mass spectrometer. TEGA will be used to analyze the amount of water and carbon dioxide ice present in the soil samples, what water-forming minerals may be present, and for the detection of any organic volatiles (such as methane).
Soil samples will also be placed into the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) - a series of four wet chemistry labs, an atomic force microscope, and a thermal and electrical conductivity probe. The wet chemistry labs will mix soils into a water solution that will allow sodium, magnesium, calcium, and sulfate to leach out of the soil. This data will be used to determine the biological compatibility of Martian soil, both for the hypothetical Martian microbe, and for future Earth-sourced visitors.
Phoenix also has a surface stereo imager, essentially two mast-mounted cameras, which will provide three dimensional images of the Martian arctic. The probe is equipped with a meteorological station that will measure wind direction and speed, air pressure, and temperature, along with a laser ranging system that will be used to measure the amount of dust in the air. Phoenix does have a landing camera that would have been activated after the jettisoning of the heat shield and used to pinpoint where the probe landed and whether that area was similar to the rest of the Martian arctic, but tests of the hardware revealed that the camera suffered data corruption issues when handling multiple images, and that same hardware also was used to operate other parts of the lander. Faced with the possibility of crippling Phoenix by simply taking pictures, NASA engineers elected to simply leave the camera in place and just not use it. Even so, the Mars Descent Imager is both the lightest and most efficient camera ever launched into space.
The history of the Phoenix probe is an interesting one, as many of its parts were actually built for the cancelled Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander. After the project was cancelled in May 2000 following the failure of both the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander, the unfinished lander was locked away in a NASA clean room. In August 2003, the Mars Surveyor Lander was resurrected courtesy of the Mars Scout Program, which issued a $325 million grant to the University of Arizona to operate the lander. Phoenix launched from Earth on August 4, 2007; it's initial mission duration is set for 90 Martian sols, which equates to 92.46 Earth days.
Watch: NASA TV - Phoenix Landing Live (May 25, 6:00 PM EDT)
Discuss: TrekUnited Forum
Thanks to Sevnson_71 live coverage for the heads up!
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