Artist's concept of Phoenix. Image credit: NASA/JPL♥ The NASA’s Phoenix Spacecraft is already on Mars. This was the first successful landing in a polar region of Mars.
It’s journey began’s aboard a Delta II rocket, and “Pheonix touched down on Mars at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (00:53 a.m. Greenwich time, today) , in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.”
“Mars is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. But in the Martian arctic, water ice lurks just below ground level. Discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2002 show large amounts of subsurface water ice in the northern arctic plain. The Phoenix lander targets this circumpolar region using a robotic arm to dig through the protective top soil layer to the water ice below and ultimately, to bring both soil and water ice to the lander platform for sophisticated scientific analysis.”
The Phoenix Mission has two bold objectives to support these goals, which are:
- To study the history of water in all its phases in the Martian arctic and
- Search for evidence of a habitable zone and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary.
It’s journey began’s aboard a Delta II rocket, and “Pheonix touched down on Mars at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (00:53 a.m. Greenwich time, today) , in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.”
“Mars is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. But in the Martian arctic, water ice lurks just below ground level. Discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2002 show large amounts of subsurface water ice in the northern arctic plain. The Phoenix lander targets this circumpolar region using a robotic arm to dig through the protective top soil layer to the water ice below and ultimately, to bring both soil and water ice to the lander platform for sophisticated scientific analysis.”
The Phoenix Mission has two bold objectives to support these goals, which are:
- To study the history of water in all its phases in the Martian arctic and
- Search for evidence of a habitable zone and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary.
Links:
Everyday news: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/spacecraft/index.html
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/gallery.php
+ View Flash photo gallery
+ View Delta launch vehicle video
+ Phoenix Mission site
+ Mission objectives
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário