Newest "Alien" on MarsNASA's latest mission to Mars, dubbed Phoenix, had a successful landing on Sunday. I was too busy blogging about the Indy 500 and Memorial day so this comes today :-). The mission of Phoenix is to study the frozen polar regions on Mars in hopes of finding the presence of water and other "life" sustaining compounds that the craft might be able to "dig" up.
Phoenix is dubbed such after the mythical bird that arises from its own ashes, like Fawkes in Harry Potter :-) Phoenix is comprised of parts from other missions to Mars that was scrapped, hence being born out of the ashes. It is equipped with a digging robotic arm that will allow Phoenix to scrape up material and deposit it inside itself for chemical analysis. Like the two rovers on Mars currently, this mission is slated for 90 days. If you use the backdrop of the mars rovers, you'll be reading about Phoenix for the next couple of years...at least we hope!
Its highly unlikely though due to its location in the polar regions where the sun light is low, especially during the winter. It is likely the cold will sap the power out of the batteries much sooner than the crippling dust would. Fun stuff. Shuttle launch scheduled for this weekend...woot!
No comments:
Post a Comment