Prepare for landing on Mars
— -- Once a graveyard for space probes, Mars is now a prime destination in scientific exploration. NASA's latest lander aims to uncover fresh territory on the Red Planet.
Launched Aug. 5, the space agency's Phoenix mission is on a 10-month trip to Mars' northern plains. If it lands as planned, the $400 million Scout lander will dig into the soil and ice, searching for signatures of life-friendly conditions in the planet's ancient past.
"We now know there are massive ice deposits where Phoenix is landing," says mission scientist Diana Blaney of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The launch comes amid a renaissance in Martian studies as the durable Mars rovers — the rolling geology labs that landed in January 2004 — head toward a fourth year of exploration and a fleet of orbiters circle the planet.
"Right now, it's exciting, and things are getting better and better in what we're learning about Mars," says Louis Friedman, head of the Planetary Society in Pasadena.
In "the dark days of 1999," as Friedman says, Mars science seemed jinxed with the crash of NASA's $120 million Mars Polar Lander and the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter late that year. The Phoenix mission uses instruments designed for the lost polar lander and follows in its intended footsteps, but with better direction, Blaney says: "We know the water ice is there now."
"I remember the dark times," Blaney says. "Now it's a lot busier." A dust storm on Mars that temporarily shut down the rovers, which are fueled by solar power, was almost helpful to mission scientists, says Blaney, who is also deputy project scientist for that mission. "We needed a chance to catch our breath."
Search for water runs deep
"Follow the water" has been NASA's mantra for exploring Mars in the past decade as it searches for signs of life's crucial ingredient. Since the rover called Opportunity (the other one is Spirit) discovered rock layers left behind by salt-laced waters, new discoveries have fundamentally changed the scientific view of Mars, says William Hartmann of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson.
