NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander project has been an unquestionable success, and it may still provide some secrets of the Red Planet before Phoenix slowly dies in the new few weeks says a Texas A&M University researcher in charge of its landscape camera. Mark Lemmon, a professor in atmospheric sciences who has been involved in running the camera on the Lander since it landed on May 25, believes the $420 million Lander mission has given the scientific community a wealth of information about Mars, such as its landscape, soil, weather conditions and most importantly, its water content.
(Media-Newswire.com) - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander project has been an unquestionable success, and it may still provide some secrets of the Red Planet before Phoenix slowly dies in the new few weeks says a Texas A&M University researcher in charge of its landscape camera.
Mark Lemmon, a professor in atmospheric sciences who has been involved in running the camera on the Lander since it landed on May 25, believes the $420 million Lander mission has given the scientific community a wealth of information about Mars, such as its landscape, soil, weather conditions and most importantly, its water content.
Lemmon says the plan was "to follow the water," meaning to investigate the presence of water on Mars, past and present. In all, Lemmon said the Lander has taken over 30,000 images of the Martian terrain. It started taking photos within an hour of landing.
The Lander's robotic arms, capable of scooping up small amounts of soil, uncovered ice just inches below the surface in front of the Lander. Other photos showed terrain similar to the permafrost-filled dry valleys of Antarctica .
Phoenix set down in an area in the northern hemisphere of Mars, similar to the Northwest Territories of Canada, Lemmon says. "We've known for decades that Mars has large polar ice caps," Lemmon, now back on campus after spending the past five months at the project's headquarters at the University of Arizona, says. "But we hoped to go where the ice was mixed with the soil. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter found the place, and Phoenix Lander found the ice."
The Lander also is equipped with two chemistry labs to examine the soil's contents. One has tiny ovens about the size of a matchbox, capable of heating up the Martian soil to 1,800 F. The other has a microscope station and beakers to dissolve soil in liquid water brought from Earth.
"We wanted to know what was in the soil, was it toxic and could it contain any energy sources," he notes.
"The soil on Mars looks like rusty dust. We did find minerals that had likely been created in a liquid environment." He says that Phoenix discovered perchlorate, carbonate, sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium and chlorine in the Martian soil.
While operating the cameras, Lemmon imaged several Martian "dust devils" like those that frequently occur in Texas and the Southwest. The cameras also recorded areas of frost forming, and there are strong indications Mars has frequent cold fronts that sweep down from the north similar to those on Earth.
The solar-powered Lander was fully energized for the first three months. The sun did not set until late August, but now the summer is fading away, the nights are longer, and stormy skies are blocking solar energy from the Lander's solar arrays, Lemmon points out.
"Phoenix has gone for over a week without doing science activities as engineers struggle to regain control over the energy-starved spacecraft," Lemmon says. "Even if that is successful, the cold Martian winter is about to set in - Lander will be encased in dry ice for months at temperatures below minus 110 degrees.
"It will no doubt succumb to the harsh Martian winter. We are hoping to get some more good science out of it, but it's not likely to last past more than several weeks at best," Lemmon, who has also worked extensively with Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Rovers still active on the planet, explains.
"The Lander was only given a 90-day lifespan, and it has given us an incredible amount of information about Mars. And there's still a chance it might show us a few more secrets about Mars that we had not known."
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