As the first of the new Mars Scouts missions, the Phoenix project was selected by NASA in August of 2003. Four years later, almost to the day, Phoenix was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station and successfully injected into an interplanetary trajectory on its way to Mars. This paper will highlight some of the key changes since the 2006 IEEE paper of the same name, as well as activities, challenges and problems encountered on the way to the launch pad. Phoenix "Follows the water" responding directly to the recently published data from Dr. William Boynton, PI (and Phoenix co-I) of the Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS). GRS data indicate extremely large quantities of water ice (up to 50% by mass) within the upper 50 cm of the northern polar regolith. Phoenix will land within the north polar region at 68.2°N, 233.4°W identified by GRS to harbor near surface water ice and provide in-situ confirmation of this extraordinary find. Our mission will investigate water in all its phases, and will investigate the history of water as evidenced in the soil characteristics that will be carefully examined by the powerful suite of onboard instrumentation. Access to the critical subsurface region expected to contain this information is made possible by a third generation robotic arm capable of excavating the expected Martian regolith to a depth of 1m.
Phoenix - The First Mars Scout Mission
01.03.2008
25203870 byte
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Phoenix: The first Mars Scout mission
IEEE | 2009
|Phoenix-the first Mars Scout mission
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2005
|Phoenix - The First Mars Scout Mission
NTRS | 2008
|Phoenix#8212the first Mars Scout mission
Online Contents | 2005
|