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Mission to Mars
(By Will Dunham)mars

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA will send its Mars rover Opportunity into a gaping Martian crater in July to seek clues about the planet's bygone environment despite risks to the plucky little vehicle, officials said on Thursday. There is the chance the six-wheeled fact-gathering robot will be unable to handle the terrain inside Victoria Crater or get out once it gets in, they said. But U.S. space agency officials said they did not view this as a suicide mission for Opportunity and looked forward to the potential for a deeper understanding of Earth's planetary neighbor. It is one of two rovers now on the Martian surface.
Opportunity is due to enter the crater either July 7 or July 9, according to John Callas, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We know that the rewards are worth the risk," added Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's science mission office. "Entering this crater does come with some unknowns." "We can't be certain about the terrains and the footing down in the crater until we go there. We can't guarantee, although we think we're likely to come back out of the crater," Stern told reporters. Victoria Crater, near the Martian equator, is about half a mile wide and was formed by the primordial impact by a space rock on the planet's surface. Mission scientists have been directing Opportunity to roll around the rim of the crater, exploring layered rocks and looking for the easiest place to make its entrance. They settled on a rock-paved slope on an alcove dubbed Duck Bay. Callas said Duck Bay has entry slopes of no more than 20 degrees, with the rover able to handle a slope as steep as 32 degrees. Callas said there is confidence the rover can travel safety at least 330 feet into the crater. NOW OR NEVER The rover, originally intended to operate for three months, has kept going strong for 12 times as long. The scientists have carefully plotted its mission to explore Victoria's secrets to enable an eventual exit but acknowledge that the rover could become trapped inside or lose some capabilities. With the rover aging, it was now or never for this descent into the crater, they said. The scientists want Opportunity to gather data on the composition of material in the crater's depths that may provide further evidence about an ancient environment on Mars that many experts think was wet and potentially habitable by at least microbial life forms. As it goes deeper into the giant hole, it will be able to examine more ancient rocks in the crater's exposed walls. "The rovers have been amazingly resilient to date. They're hardy little vehicles. We're quite confident," Callas said. The crater is about five times wider than Endurance Crater, which Opportunity devoted more than six months exploring in 2004. Victoria Crater is about 4 miles south of the spot where Opportunity landed in January 2004. Callas said the Victoria Crater mission was an easier jaunt for Opportunity than going into Endurance Crater because the initial slopes are somewhat less steep and the scientists have more experience guiding it in such terrain. The robot's discoveries in Endurance Crater revealed evidence of the water-rich ancient history of Mars. Opportunity started rolling toward Victoria from Endurance 30 months ago.


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 Next Craft to Mars Will Go to the North Pole and Search for Water Ice
Nasa mission - Saranathan
NASA
Phoenix in preparation at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver.
By Warren E.L.
Published: July 10, 2007

MARS MISSION

WASHINGTON, July 9 — The next spacecraft heading for Mars, a lander cobbled together from unused parts of other craft, is to examine the previously unvisited arctic region of the planet that appears to have water ice beneath the surface. NASA officials said Monday that they were ready to send Phoenix Mars Lander to the northern region of the Red Planet. Plans call for launching the craft from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a Delta II rocket during a three-week window that opens on Aug. 3.After taking almost 10 months to reach Mars, the spacecraft is to make a fiery entry into the atmosphere before being slowed by a parachute and eventually landing with the help of a series of pulsing retro rockets.“Phoenix is going to a completely new area,” Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, the mission’s principal scientist, said during a news briefing at NASA headquarters. Past spacecraft landing on Mars have visited the central or equatorial areas of the planet. “We’ll be in the northern arctic region, in the permafrost area, where we think there is water in the form of ice mixed with soil beneath the surface,” Mr. Smith said later.Unlike the roving craft last sent to Mars, the Phoenix Lander will drop in one place and stay there. With an eight-foot-long arm that operates like a backhoe, the robot craft is to dig a series of trenches more than 20 inches into the ground and retrieve samples for analysis by instruments it carries.NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter found evidence in 2002 to support theories that large areas of Mars, including the arctic plains, have water ice. Mr. Smith said Phoenix is to spend more than three months looking at the composition and chemistry of the soil samples to see what happens when the ice melts. This is to see whether frozen water near the Martian surface might periodically melt enough to sustain a livable environment for microbes. In addition, the spacecraft will serve as a Martian weather station, following changes in the polar region to help scientists build a model of the planet’s weather. The craft is equipped with a laser for assessing water and dust in the atmosphere. The spacecraft, which runs 18 feet wide and 5 feet long with twin solar power panels extended, includes a stereo camera to survey the landing site, a descent camera to see the site in broader context before landing and two microscopes. Phoenix Lander is the first mission in NASA’s new Mars Scout Program of relatively low-cost missions to the planet to supplement billion-dollar “flagship” projects to study the planet. Phoenix draws its name from the mythical bird that rose from its ashes, because the craft is made up of parts of two earlier attempts to explore Mars. The spacecraft is made of the supporting structure and some instruments from the 2001 Mars Surveyor lander, which never flew, and several instruments from the unsuccessful Mars Polar Lander in 1999.


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