NASA’s Phoenix Launch to Mars from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral Postponed until Saturday, August 4th
July 30th, 2007
Cape Canaveral, FL - Powered by a Boeing Delta II 7925 launch vehicle, Phoenix will begin its mission within a 22 day launch window in August of 2007. The launch will take place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Launch opportunity dates for Phoenix begin Aug. 3, 2007. If Phoenix launches during the first portion of a three-week launch opportunity, it will land May 25, 2008. The landing will be on arctic ground where a mission currently in orbit, Mars Odyssey, has detected high concentrations of ice just beneath the top layer of soil.
Launch Date: 8/4/7
Time: 5:24 a.m. or 6:02 a.m.
Location: SLC-17A, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
NASA’s openly competed program of Mars Scout missions. Phoenix will land in icy soils near the north polar permanent ice cap of Mars and explore the history of the water in the ice while monitoring polar climate. It will serve as NASA’s first exploration of a potential modern habitat on Mars and renew a search for carbon-bearing compounds, last attempted with NASA’s Viking missions in the 1970s.
A stereo color camera and a weather station will study the surrounding environment while the other instruments check samples of soil and ice for evidence about whether the site was ever hospitable to life. Microscopes will reveal features as small as one one-thousandth the width of a human hair.
Science Objectives
Findings from Mars Odyssey indicate the top half meter (20 inches) of Mars’ surface layer is mostly ice throughout large regions of the planet pole-ward of 65 degrees north latitude. Phoenix will seek clues about the history of that ice. Is this the frozen residue of an ancient ocean? Did it diffuse into the ground from water vapor in the atmosphere? Did a retreating ice sheet leave it behind? Information such as the amount of layering, the textures of the ice and soil, and the chemical composition at different depths could distinguish among those and other possibilities.
Indicators about the history of the near-surface ice, together with Phoenix instruments’ observations of seasonal changes over a span of several months, will improve understanding about climate cycles on Mars. One tantalizing question is whether cycles, either short-term or long-term, might produce conditions when even small amounts of near-surface water might stay melted.
The goal of learning about ice history and climate cycles dovetails with the Phoenix mission’s most exciting task — to evaluate whether an environment hospitable to microbial life may exist at the ice-soil boundary. Even if water remains liquid only for short periods between long intervals, life can persist if other factors are right, as studies of arctic environments on Earth testify. Phoenix will examine some of those other factors, such as whether organic compounds are present and whether strong oxidants in the soil make conditions too harsh for life.
