NASA's
Mars-bound Phoenix spacecraft is gearing up for a landmark landing near the
martian north pole this month to find out whether the region could have once
supported microbial life.
Phoenix is on
course for a planned May 25 touchdown
in the martian arctic that, if successful, will mark the first powered
landing on Mars since NASA's hefty Viking 2 lander set down in 1976. But first,
the probe is expected to fire its thrusters several times in the next few
weeks to fine-tune its flight path.
"It's scary
how smooth it's been," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The vehicle has just been
behaving beautifully."
The Phoenix
lander tweaked
its course in early April and is scheduled to fire its thrusters in three
successive Saturday maneuvers beginning May 10. The spacecraft has flown so
accurately that one of the maneuvers may not be necessary, Goldstein said.
Launched in
August 2007, Phoenix is a stationary lander equipped with a trench-digging
robotic arm to bite into the martian surface and scoop up samples of nearby soil
and water ice. The probe's top-mounted suite of ovens and wet chemistry
instruments are designed to help determine whether its arctic plain landing
site - a region similar in latitude to central Greenland or northern Alaska on
Earth - could have once proven habitable
for primitive life.
"We're
looking for all the ingredients for life," Phoenix deputy principle
investigator Deborah Bass of JPL told SPACE.com.
Phoenix
also includes a martian atmosphere-monitoring station designed to provide daily
weather updates during the probe's planned three-month mission. Engineers at
JPL will oversee the spacecraft's initial Mars descent and landing before
transferring operations to a control center at the University of Arizona,
Tucson, for the remainder of the $420 million mission.
"This is an
area of Mars that I have spent my career studying and I cannot wait to see
those first images," Bass said. "To see that ice, what that frozen tundra is
going to look like...whatever we see will be amazing because no one's seen it
before."
Unlike the
most recent probes to land on Mars - NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity and the lost
British lander Beagle 2 - Phoenix will not use airbags to cushion its arrival
on the martian surface. Instead, it carries a set of rocket thrusters control
its final descent, though its approach will mark the first powered landing
attempt since NASA's Mars
Polar Lander crashed near the planet's south pole in December 1999.
"I have
always trumpeted the fact that we should be very guarded and very humble in our
approach with what we're trying to do, because it is so difficult," Goldstein
said, adding that engineers have identified and addressed as many of the risks
as possible.
Phoenix's
science team, led by principle investigator Peter Smith at the University of
Arizona, Tucson, has been eagerly preparing for the lander's Mars arrival with
a series of training simulations for landing day and mission operations. The
most recent simulation, a dress rehearsal for Phoenix's entry and descent
through the martian atmosphere, was scheduled for Tuesday.
"At this
point, we feel we're in good shape and we want to do it. We're ready," Bass
said. "This team is itching to get its hands on this stuff...it's show time."
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