By Xinhua,
Washington : NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls of Martian soil and buried ice.
The lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on May 25, according to the mission updates released on Tuesday.
Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 13,000 mph ( about 20,000 km per hour). In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 5 mph (about 8 km per hour) before its three legs reach the ground.
“This is not a trip to grandma’s house. Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Internationally, fewer than half the attempts have succeeded.”
Rocks large enough to spoil the landing or prevent opening of the solar panels present the biggest known risk. However, images from the camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailed enough to show individual rocks smaller than the lander, have helped lessen that risk.
If all goes well, confirmation of the landing could come as early as 7:53 p.m. EDT on May 25, said NASA.
Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity.
Phoenix left Earth on Aug. 4, 2007. The solar-powered robotic lander is designed to manipulate a 7.7-foot arm to scoop up samples of underground ice and soil lying above the ice.
One research goal is to assess whether conditions at the landing site ever have been favorable for microbial life. Another important question is whether the scooped-up samples contain carbon-based chemicals that are potential building blocks and food for life.