NASA has successfully put six robots on the Martian surface over the past three decades. The most recent, the Phoenix Mars Lander, landed brilliantly on Sunday at 11:36 p.m. universal time in the North Pole region. The Phoenix is the first probe in a program calledScout, an initiative that develops more competitive ships at a lower cost – only $ 420 million was invested in construction and launch, half that of other probes in the past.
Unlike the “rovers” or MER A and B explorers launched four years ago, the Phoenix’s mission will not be to wander around taking samples of stones from the surface. Phoenix is ageólogo “in situ”, which will excavate the soil under its paws in the high boreal latitudes of Mars, geologically similar to Greenland or Alaska. “When people tell me that the Phoenix is not mobile, like the rovers, I tell them they are wrong,” says planetary scientist Steve Squyers. “Of course it does. It has vertical mobility.”
Scientists chose the Martian Arctic because it is free of rocks and seems easier to excavate. Astrobiologists and planetary geologists hope the robot will not only touch the frozen water on the Martian surface, but will “taste” and “sniff” it with it.piggyback mini-lab. The mission will study thehistory of water in ice, will monitor the climate of the polar region, and investigate if the environment below the surface has been at any time favorable to sustainmicrobial life(as we define it on Earth). If Phoenix detects organic compounds suitable for life, the Martian Arctic region could become a highly coveted location for researchers in future explorations.
Although Mars is smaller than Earth, it should be noted that it does not have oceans to hide its surface, so it actually has a huge area of exposed land that needs to be investigated.
The creators of the Phoenix liken their robot to a used car, because it is made from parts of another spaceship. In fact, much of the Phoenix was already in a warehouse since 2001, because its main systems were designed and built to be launched on the Mars Surveyor mission that year. But NASA canceled the mission after the loss of a similar device, the Mars Polar Lander, which disappeared during its arrival on Mars in 1999. No one knows for sure what happened to that probe, but it is said that it was a miscalculation. caused by a confusion between the metric and English systems.
The team of researchers who proposed the aptly named Phoenix mission, led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson, developed a plan to modernize the disgraced craft, following NASA’s new-age canons of the “faster, cheaper and better. “
Unlike previous landings, in which the robots arrived wrapped in bags of air that bounced like a large beach ball on the ground, Phoenix landed on its own engines, slowing its fall, for the longest seven minutes in the world. NASA had not orchestrated this ballet since the successful landing of the Viking ships in 1976.
Since most hardware in the Phoenix is between 8 and 10 years old, there is still a certain amount of risk with this mission. For example, there are systems that do not have redundancy during the entry and landing stage. Extensive testing identified a dozen other concerns such as the deployment of solar panels once on the surface and the survival of scientific instruments. Or theThe Phoenix’s radar system, which was initially designed as an altimeter for fighter jets. And during its landing, this radar will have to provide the probe with information not only about your altitude, but also about your descent speed and horizontal speed. The on-board computer will use that information several times per second to adjust the firing of its 12 engines.
Angela Posada-Swafford
