Phoenix Site Options

[remcook]

did it got mentioned that the site was launched last week or so?


http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Bob, the really big qualitative difference between Phoenix and the MERs is that the latter were designed primarily to investigate ROCKS (for which you have to travel long distances horizontally), while Phoenix is designed to investigate SOIL -- which is far more evenly mixed in the horizontal dimension.

This was a major consideration in the design of Polar Lander. I have several 1995 documents from its science definition team during their consideration of its proper payload, which stated that its single most important goal was to look at the makeup of "evenly mixed substances" on Mars -- namely, the soil and the atmosphere -- for the clues they could provide on the very-long-term climate history of Mars over its entire global extent. Rocks were described as very minor scientifically for MPL. Phoenix has exactly the same traits, except that it will place more emphasis than MPL would have on the biological habitability of the near-surface ice layer.

By the way, the science groups determining the exploration strategy for Europa have also emphasized that the need for horizontal mobility on Europa is relatively trivial -- it's vertical mobility that is of overwhelming importance there. It will be a long time before we see any Europa rover.

[gpurcell]

Bruce, I really wonder about that. I really think Phoenix, while a cool mission, will sudder from the MER comparison and cause a lot of people to sit back and say "No immobile missions anymore."

[helvick]

Bruce, I really wonder about that.  I really think Phoenix, while a cool mission, will sudder from the MER comparison and  cause a lot of people to sit back and say "No immobile missions anymore."

I don't know - it depends an awful lot on what you're trying to do. Landers that gather long term weather data (Tau, insolation, ambient temperature, ground temperature, sky temperature profile, wind speed and direction, high energy radiation, atmospheric composition) or that have a primary aim of putting an array of really good seismometers on the ground don't need to be mobile at all.

IF target selection and EDL are good enough then the Phoenix team should be able to avoid landing on a large slab of bedrock, that's the most likely situation I can see that would prevent the soil analysis experiments.

I'm really looking forward to Phoenix and live in hope that with less of an imaging bias that Nasa will feed out more data from the other sensors on a regular basis. In any case I'm going to be cheering the little Fire Bird on all the way.