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Mars lander ready to explore the Red Planet
Canada News.Net
Thursday 29th May, 2008
The Phoenix Mars Lander has released its robotic arm to begin prodding the red planet's surface to look for chemistry that could support life.
NASA officials hope the robotic arm can poke into the surface to substantiate evidence of ice or water in the northernmost areas of Mars that could have supported life.
Chemical compositions can be analyzed aboard the craft and the results beamed back to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Phoenix landed on Mars Sunday after a 10-month, 680-million kilometre journey.
The first evidence of water on Mars was found by the Odyssey orbiter in 2002, and NASA wanted to send a rover to the northern area of the planet, where it believes there are heavier concentrations of ice ground.
Phoenix's Sunday landing marked the beginning of the US$420-million mission to explore the Martian surface.
The lander experienced a technical hitch when a spacecraft orbiting Mars refused to relay instructions from Earth to Phoenix.
NASA resorted to a backup plan by rerouting signals through another orbiter.
Communications resumed and orders were given to deploy the robotic arm.
Phoenix is set to use the calm of the three-month northern Martian summer to carry out its work.
Sand storms during the rest of the year would interfere with the solar collectors.
In addition, Phoenix will project laser beams into the Martian atmosphere to study cloud structure and other elements.
After the onset of the Martian winter, the probe will continue to work as a weather station.
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Comments on this story
everest
05-29-08, 09:55 PM |
Mars lander ready to explore the Red Planet
only if everybody could find jobs as astronomers, whose jobs are so liberating and free.
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Anonymous
05-30-08, 06:17 AM |
Not free of stress
The success of the Mars mission makes all the calculations and engineering that went into it look effortless. Considering 50% of the world’s missions to Mars have ended in failure, you can imagine the pressure on the physicists, engineers, and astronomers to get it right. A lot of sleepless nights before getting to enjoy the success of a mission well done.
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WWW
05-30-08, 12:45 AM |
Mars jobs
Musicians,astronmers,travel job people, writers,movie makers, deep pockets and any happy worker has creative,liberating,interesting,functional and free life
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