Title :
The Phoenix mission to Mars
Author_Institution :
Lunar & Planetary Lab., Arizona Univ., Tucson, AZ, USA
Abstract :
Like the bird of ancient mythology, the Phoenix mission is reborn out of fire; a new mission is born from the embers of previous missions. Phoenix returns to flight the Mars Surveyor Program´s 2001 (MSP´01) lander that was mothballed in 2000; at that time, the project was 25% through its final test period. In addition, a diverse scientific payload has been chosen from the instruments from the Mars Polar Lander and the MSP´01 missions. This complement of spacecraft and payload will perform a scientific analysis of the Martian arctic soils and weather to unravel the history of water in all its phases and assess the potential for biology.
Keywords :
Mars; planetary surfaces; space research; space vehicles; MSP´01 missions; Mars Polar Lander; Mars Surveyor Program 2001; Martian arctic soils; Martian weather; Phoenix mission; biology; spacecraft; Birds; Fires; History; Instruments; Mars; Payloads; Performance analysis; Soil; Space vehicles; Testing;
Conference_Titel :
Aerospace Conference, 2004. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-8155-6
DOI :
10.1109/AERO.2004.1367617
