Phoenix - Scouting for Water on the Red Planet

Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft that will be used for a space exploration mission to Mars. The scientists conducting the mission will use instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water on the red planet. Phoenix is scheduled to launch in August 2007 and land on Mars in May 2008. The multiagency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA. The program is a partnership of universities from the U.S., Canada, Switzerland and Germany; NASA; the Canadian Space Agency; and the aerospace industry. Phoenix will land in the planet’s water-ice-rich northern polar region and use its robotic arm to dig into the arctic terrain.

NASA selected the University of Arizona to lead the Phoenix mission back in August 2003, hoping it would be the first in a new line of smaller, low-cost “Scout” missions in the agency’s exploration of Mars (the cost is about $75 million cheaper than the Spirit/Opportunity rovers, and less than a third the cost of the Viking landers of 1976). The selection was the result of an intense two-year competition with proposals from other institutions. The $325-million NASA award is more than six times larger than any other single research grant in University of Arizona history.

The Mission has a collaborative approach to space exploration. As the very first of NASA’s Mars Scout class, Phoenix combines legacy and innovation in a framework of a true partnership: government, academia and industry. Scout-class missions are led by a scientist, known as a Principal Investigator (PI), whose role is to manage all the scientific data gathered by the spacecraft and lead the mission’s technical and scientific teams.

Pathfinder Airbags in

Phoenix is a partnership of universities, NASA centers and the aerospace industry. The science instruments and operations will the University of Arizona’s responsibility. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, operated under contract by Caltech for NASA, will manage the project and provide mission design and control. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colorado, will build and test the spacecraft. The Canadian Space Agency will provide a meteorological station, including an innovative laser-based atmospheric sensor. The co-investigator institutions include Malin Space Science Systems, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Johnson Space Center, Optech Incorporated and SETI Institute, to name just a few.

The lander will land the same way the Viking landers did, slowed primarily by landing rockets, shifting from a recent trend of using air bags for softening landings, as was demonstrated in the Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity missions, as well as Europe’s ill fated probe—the Beagle 2. In 2007, a report was filed at the American Astronomical Society by Washington State University professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch that made a claim that rocket exhaust contaminated the Viking landing sites, potentially killing any life that may have been there. The hypothesis was made long after any modifications to Phoenix could be made without delaying the mission significantly. One of the investigators on the Phoenix mission, NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay merely stated that the report “piqued his interest.” Experiments conducted by Nilton Renno, mission co-investigator from the University of Michigan, and his students, have specifically looked at the how much surface dust will be kicked up when Phoenix lands. It was determined, however, that the robotic arm could reach undisturbed soil, for sampling and analyzing.