Looking for Martian life? Phoenix may find it

By Leonard David

Senior space writer

updated 9:28 p.m. ET Aug. 31, 2005

BOULDER, Colo. - 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.

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 canceled and mothballed in 2000.

Work on preparing Phoenix for its Earth departure has reached the halfway point. Many of the scientific instruments for Phoenix were already built, needing little or no modification for Mars duties. Still, the craft is undergoing extensive testing and technological tweaking.

Phoenix is the first in NASA's Scout program. This class of mission is viewed as innovative, relatively low-cost and complementary to the "major missions" slated as part of the space agency’s Mars exploration program.

Unlike the up-and-running Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the Phoenix is a one-stop-shopping, fixed lander. Once it's firmly sitting on the planet, the craft literally swings into action, using a robotic arm to furrow into the local landscape and analyzing bits of scooped-up material with a bevy of instruments.

The Phoenix Mission is operated for NASA by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lockheed Martin and the Canadian Space Agency.

Peter Smith of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory heads the Phoenix lander effort. He outlined the goals of the $386 million mission during the 8th International Mars Society Convention, held Aug. 11-14 at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ice/soil boundary
"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. "The Phoenix mission was designed specifically to look at current processes on Mars … not billions of years ago, but what’s happening today."

Having Phoenix targeted to a still-to-be-picked specific northern polar spot on the Red Planet, Smith said, "really provides an opportunity for finding a habitable zone on Mars today … not an ancient one, but a modern one." He stressed that Phoenix will do more than look for life, and is well-equipped to study the polar processes on Mars.

Upon its arrival at the exploration site in May 2008, Phoenix is designed to investigate the ice/soil boundary. "Basically, the clock is ticking once we land," Smith reported.

When Phoenix touches 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.

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