While reviewing the Internet for information about the Phoenix Mars Lander I cam across a link to the JPL Solar System Simulator. This is a fantastic tool that allows you to track many objects, from space craft to the planets and moons in our solar system. So I thought, while reporting on the progress of Phoenix I would have a go at plotting the course of Phoenix as at 10:00 UTC on 22d 10m 2007y. This is the result:
Now I know that this is a very small image but if you look carefully you can just pick out the Earth (blue), Mars (orange) and the Phoenix and Rosseta space craft (green) on their respective flight paths. More images of the flight path are available from the Arizona University website located here. I urge you to have a go with the programme at JPL, it really is quite remarkable. As you can see - or not from the size of the diagram, Phoenix is currently traveling at 114 217 kph and has traveled 226 411 km since launch.
The mission's objective is to obtain and analyse material from the Arctic north of the planet. Phoenix's Principal Investigator, Peter Smith, states "What I hope that we can find – and I have no way of knowing – is that the ice preserves the organic material that has at least fallen on Mars over the last four billion years," Smith says. "A lot of it comes from asteroids and comets – you find organics on the Moon, for gosh sake. Why don't you find it on Mars?" And more importantly, how do you know where to land?
With the landing site issue in mind, the Phoenix project reviewed images taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which had sent the following images back to earth showing potential sources of water at the polar regions.
In this image the the water is not indicated by the colour blue, but by the colour red. But still more information is required as so far the topography of these regions have not been mapped to a significant level of resolution to understand the actual geographic lay of the land. So the Phoenix team is waiting for more images from the Mars Orbiter, at a higher resolution before selecting the final landing sites. This next image is one taken from the Mars Orbiter. As you
can see it shows sand dunes in their classic crescent shapes created by the Martian winds. You can find more on the Martian geology here.
The current issue is to obtain information at the next level down, i.e. what is the surface of this area actually like? Are there boulders? How high are these dunes? What can we expect from the surface of the planet? My assumption here is that the information supplied by the Mars Rovers will be used in conjunction with current magnetic imaging and high res photographic images to assess and select a possible set of landing sites. According to the Register a site has already been rejected as pictures showed it was studded with boulders the size of mini-vans. Good luck to the team with that!
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