Word: phoenixed
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Never was the oddly ex post facto quality of celestial news more surreally on display than on May 25, when the Phoenix spacecraft touched down on Mars, the first landing ever in the Red Planet's polar region. In order to arrive at its destination in one piece, Phoenix had to cap its sleepy 10-month journey with a fiery 7-min. plunge through the atmosphere, during which it opened its parachutes, jettisoned its heat shield, fired its engines and decelerated from a blistering 12,700 m.p.h. (20,400 km/h) to a toe-in-the-dust touchdown speed...
...Phoenix's case, another tale is just beginning. The ship will soon start to sample the frozen soil of the Martian pole, where a possible abundance of ice indicates a possible abundance of water and could--in theory--mean a little bit of life. If such a discovery is made, that news too will reach us 15 min. later--though odds are, no one will gripe about the wait...
...stationary probe will begin its search for frozen water. Scientists say Mars was once flush with rivers and lakes, but most of the water escaped into space due to the planet's low gravity and thin atmosphere. What's left is believed to be concentrated at the poles. Phoenix will soon begin digging for it, extending an 8 ft. (2.35 m) robotic arm outfitted with a movable scoop. First, however, scientists will use landing-site images to build a virtual 3-D computer map of the terrain so they can operate the arm from Earth. "The arm itself is kind...
...Phoenix Lander is something of a make-good for the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander (MPL), which crashed near the south pole in 1999. The two spacecraft share the same design and Phoenix was originally headed to the planet as Mars Surveyor 2001 until the MPL crash prompted NASA to mothball the project. After correcting several design flaws, NASA resurrected Surveyor as the Mars Phoenix Lander. The space agency, which spent $100 million on Surveyor, has invested another $420 million in the improved vehicle. The Canadian Space Agency contributed another $37 million for a weather station...
...spacecraft now has about three months to study the Martian north pole before -200 F winter temperatures hit the region and threaten to freeze the instruments. But Phoenix is designed with a longer, six-to-eight-month stay in mind, so hopes are high that the probe will not only find frozen water but will also serve as a precursor to later missions seeking evidence of microscopic organic life. Which means that NASA, like Frosty, will probably be back again someday...