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Another Mars landing on Sunday
May. 22nd, 2008 11:12 pmPreparations for the Phoenix lander, to come down near the edge of the north polar cap.
Phoenix is the one that is a combination of elements from two missions that didn't make it, the crashed Mars Polar Lander and the canceled Mars Surveyor 2001 lander (Phoenix's frame actually is the body of the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander, pulled out of storage and refitted). In its landing technique, Phoenix is like Mars Polar Lander or the 1970s Viking landers; it's going to attempt a classical soft landing on legs with retrorockets, rather than the radical bouncy-airbag-polyhedron technique that worked so well for Mars Pathfinder and the two rovers. Here's hoping this mode works better for Phoenix than it did for MPL. If all goes well, it will dig through the soil to sample the ice that should lie just beneath the surface.
Phoenix is the one that is a combination of elements from two missions that didn't make it, the crashed Mars Polar Lander and the canceled Mars Surveyor 2001 lander (Phoenix's frame actually is the body of the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander, pulled out of storage and refitted). In its landing technique, Phoenix is like Mars Polar Lander or the 1970s Viking landers; it's going to attempt a classical soft landing on legs with retrorockets, rather than the radical bouncy-airbag-polyhedron technique that worked so well for Mars Pathfinder and the two rovers. Here's hoping this mode works better for Phoenix than it did for MPL. If all goes well, it will dig through the soil to sample the ice that should lie just beneath the surface.