Madame Butterfly 0 Posted June 4, 2005 NASA May Launch Phoenix Mars in 2007 By ALICIA CHANG, AP LOS ANGELES (June 2) - NASA is moving ahead with plans to put a long-armed lander on Mars' icy north pole to search for clues for water and possible signs of life, the space agency said Thursday. The $386 million Phoenix Mars is scheduled to touch down in the Martian arctic in May 2008. The stationary probe will use its robotic arm to dig into the icy terrain and scoop up soil samples to analyze. In 2002, the Mars Odyssey orbiter spotted evidence of ice-rich soil near the arctic surface. Scientists hope the Phoenix mission will yield clues to the geologic history of water on the Red Planet and determine whether microbes existed in the ice. Phoenix will be the first mission of the Mars Scout program, a renewed, low-cost effort to study the Red Planet. During the next two years, scientists will test the spacecraft and payload as well as choose a landing site in the northern latitudes based on information gathered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that will launch in August. "The Phoenix mission explores new territory in the northern plains of Mars analogous to the permafrost regions on Earth," principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a statement. True to its name, Phoenix rose from the ashes of previous missions. The lander for Phoenix was built to fly as part of the 2001 Mars Surveyor program. But the program was scrapped after the high-profile disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander in 1999. The Polar Lander lost contact during a landing attempt near the planet's south pole after its rocket engine shut off prematurely, causing the spacecraft to tumble about 130 feet to almost certain destruction. The Phoenix probe had been in storage at a Lockheed Martin clean room in Denver before it was resurrected for its current mission. It will carry science instruments that were designed for the Mars Surveyor program including an improved panoramic camera and a trench-digging robotic arm. Phoenix will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in August 2007 and land on the planet nine months later. The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. 06/02/05 23:51 EDT Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HRH The KING 0 Posted June 5, 2005 (edited) NASA have got to start being ambitious now with their Mars probes. How many more probes are they going to send to look for ice and life? They need to start sending industrial polluting machines to Mars to try and build an atmosphere around the planet. Eventually, plant life will be sent there and an air environment would begin to be formed for possible later colonization. They need to do it now, because the process will take a very long time. I would recommend they start doing that on the Moon first, to test the technology. It beats going to the Moon for pointless reasons. We've already walked on the surface and planted the pretty flag. Now, we need to start making use of the thing. Right now, space exploration is going nowhere. We are stuck in a rut with no vision or clear idea what we need to be doing in regard to space. Manned space programs at the present stage should be limited to the ISS. Nothing more should be attempted. The space shuttles need to be scrapped and replaced with a safer more efficient design. We're not going to get anywhere significant in terms of exploration of planets with rockets. We need to develop a fuel that allows us to travel faster and longer. Robots are the way forward. Cheap and effective. This is what we need to do: - Continue to work on the ISS. Developing new technologies and research living in a space environment. - Scrap the present design of space shuttles. Replace them with a smaller capsule based craft that can travel and dock with the ISS. All satellites will be launched on unmanned disposable rockets. - Send a fleet of robot probes and satellites to orbit all the planets of the solar system, sending continuous information back to Earth. - Send a fleet of robot probes to various planets and moons of the solar system. Too hot and useless. Sending ONE probe to land on a planet is pointless. To truly gain a wide picture of what a planet or moon is like, you must send probes to land ALL over the planet or moons surface and send back data to Earth. - Send environment creating machines to the Moon, Mars and various other small moons in the solar system for future developments. - Class ALL Pluto-like planetoids as Planets. It inspires the general public more. When Sedna was discovered, many people were very excited about the fact a NEW planet had been found, only for some pedantic egghead to say "well, it's too small, so it's not a planet, but a "planetoid" in a nerdy voice. The reaction of the public was "Yawn". The scientific community are so frickin pedantic, they forget that if the public don't give a **** about space, then they start questioning the need to give the space program such a large budget. Quaror, Sedna and all other similar objects beyond Pluto should be classed as Planets in a blaze of publicity. If some nerd objects, then they can get screwed, because it doesn't matter. Boredom over the space program resulted in the Christa McAuliffe gimmick in 1986, then the entire world watched the "Teacher In Space" die a fiery death which set the space program back by two years. - ALL world space agencies should work together in cross-funding projects. Bring the private sector into it too. Military space programs will be handled seperately by national governments as part of their Departments of Defence. Military interference in the Shuttle program cost the lives of 14 astronauts through design compromises. Edited June 5, 2005 by The King Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
