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Canadian Contributions to Space Exploration

The Mars Phoenix

Sources

The Mars Phoenix

On August 4, 2007, at 5:26 am, a NASA rover lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for space exploration on Mars. The Mars Phoenix landed May 25, 2008 and began to search the martian planet. By late July 2008, NASA announced that the Mars Phoenix had discovered water ice on Mars, a breakthrough in space exploration.

  • Helmenstine, Marie Anne. 'Seeking Mars Water' About.com Chemistry. August 3, 2012 <http://chemistry.about.com/b/2012/08/03/this-day-in-science-history-august-4-seeking-mars-water.htm> [Retrieval date: December 5, 2012]
  • McKee, Maggie and David Shiga. 'Phoenix lander blasts off to Mars' New Scientist: Space. August 4, 2007 <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12422-phoenix-lander-blasts-off-to-mars.html> [Retrieval date: December 5, 2012]
  • 'Phoenix Mars Mission' Canadian Space Agency. November 23, 2011 <http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/mars/phoenix/default.asp> [Retrieval date:December 5, 2012]
  • Murray, Stuart. 'Mars' Eyewitness Books: DK Publishing Inc. 2004
  • Jefferis, David. 'Space Probes: Exploring Beyond Earth' Crabtree Publishing Company, 2009
  • 'Phoenix Mars Mission' University of Arizona: Lunar and Planetary Laboratory <http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php> [Retrieval date: December 5, 2012]

Interesting Facts!

People Involved

The Mars Phoenix Mission was led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona. Project Management of the mission was by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Spacecraft Development was by Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Climate was recorded by Canada's Meteorological Station, by scientists who came from the University of York, Dalhousie, and Alberta.

  • The Phoenix Mission marked the first time that Canada, as a nation, landed on the surface of Mars.
  • The Mars Phoenix was made from the instruments and other hardware of two previous unsuccessful attempts to explore Mars.
  • The Phoenix Lander was the first in a line of smaller, less expensive "scout" missions in NASA's Mars Exploration Program.
  • It was the first Lander to return data directly from a polar region.
  • The Mars Phoenix was ready in 2001, but its program was canceled after the loss of the Mars Polar Lander.
  • The Mars Phoenix is still on Mars, but does not work due to severe ice damage to the Lander's solar panels.

Discoveries from Mission

Goals of Mission/Contributions

After settling on the North Pole of Mars, the robotic arm from the lander scraped a shallow trench in the soil exposing a shiny substance that was later proved to be water ice. Canada's Meteorological station recorded the daily weather, Mars' temperature and pressure, and probed clouds, fog and dust in the atmosphere. They concluded that it does snow on Mars.

The Mars Phoenix was sent in response to the Mars Odyssey's Orbiter discovery of the possibility of finding ice under the polar surface of Mars. Odyssey's sensors detected a gamma ray signature from hydrogen concentrated around the North region of Mars during its mission, so the Mars Phoenix was created to investigate. This time, the rover was specifically designed to measure volatiles (especially water) and complex organic molecules in the Arctic plains of Mars.

Image: trenches dug by the Mars Phoenix to find water ice under the ground.

photo credit Nasa / Goddard Space Flight Center / Reto Stöckli

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