There is playful joking and then there is inappropriate behavoir...

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Relax take a big breath in and out

wow i'm glad he's not a moderator

Latest press release:

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Engineering Science Payload Delivered to Mars Phoenix Mission "PIT"

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I got my print version of Military & Aerospace Electronics on Monday. The online version is a month behind, so I can't link to this article, just yet.

This article is about integrating components onto the actual spacecraft at JPL in Pasadena.

Electronic pieces of NASA's next Mars mission are coming together

The article goes on to say that the flight software will be loaded for the first time, this week, and the science instruments will start to be added later this summer (as was indicated in the article ToSeek ToSeeked yesterday). Star trackers, navigation and comm systems will be added in the coming weeks.

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Sunning Frozen Soil

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One Year to Launch!

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Piecing Together Life's Potential

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The Phoenix is perhaps most enticing when you consider the astrobiology perspective

Detailed Look at the Next Mars Lander

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EDL animation:

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/multi..._animation.php

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My 0,02 cents... why Phoenix is stationary lander? In NASA? To Mars? In 2007?

This contraption should be a great toy to learn landing on Mars for boys and girls from ESA (considering their wet dreams about ExoMars), but why NASA would do that joke? Hello? We have XXI century now...

Cost.

NASA Future Mission: Phoenix Overview:

University of Arizona: Phoenix Mars Lander Overview:

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Because it doesn't need wheels to do the science it's designed to do. A grab-bag spot anywhere in the hydrogen-rich soils of the northern latitudes is enough. A rover designed to carry the instrument payload of Phoenix would have to be the size of the 2009 rover, MSL, which will cost more than twice as much.

Doug

Which brings up the question, why was Mars Polar Lander a stationary lander?
I think partly it's because it is build by the University of Arizona.
Rovers and airbags are typical JPL inventions, not everybody is convinced of their usefulness. For instance, the mobility of a rover comes at a great price, it takes a big piece out of the payload mass. That's why the 2 MER rovers only have that small science package at the tip of a robotic arm. Besides that, Phoenix is not a geology mission, it just looks for water(ice) in the ground. That ice layer should be everywhere in that region of Mars, so there is no need for driving to it. Theoretically, that is.

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Good morning Doug,
Nice to see someone in the same timezone around here!

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As others have said, you don't need mobility for the mission it is designed to perform. Mobility is technical difficult, costly in terms of payload, and expensive to produce. You only provide it if you have to. There is lots of excellent science to be done using stationary landers.

Your comment about the innovative and exciting ExoMars mission is derogatory, unneccessary and should be retracted.

Jon

Amazing how fast we get spoiled, isn't it? Give'em a couple rovers, and suffenly those stationary landers look like the Model T.

A little thought for y'all remarking about the lack of mobility.

Spirit and Opportunity were designed to look for traces of water in Martian geography. They had to be mobile, because quite frankly, no one had a clue where those signs of water might be found, if they were even there to be found at all.

With Pheonix, we know what we want, we know where it is, we don't have to go fishing for it, so mobility isn't an advantage to the mission criteria.


Please, folks, a little thought before releasing that knee-jerk, alright?

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If you talk about cost restrictions in Scout type missions, I seen more interesting mission proposals for Martian Scout missions than Phoenix.

What else? I can think only about meterological station - but doing ONE fot that much money is waste. Mission a la NetLander would be nice. In other words, if we must go with stationary landers, make bunch of them.

I will retract when they succesfully get their ExoMars on Martian ground fully operational (no craters like Beagle-2 please). And you know why? Because this mission is too innovative and too exciting for inexperienced folks from ESA. In my opinion, ESA have far, far less experience in space and surfaces of other planets than NASA. They should not begin with so big project right away.

Heh. Yeach, this is true.

Hmmm. This is somewhat convincing, but still one mobile rover = new stationary lander in new place every week. And you would use two, three, ten, more Phoenix landers, right? At least for comparing different drill sites.

That's your opinion. The review panel when Phoenix was approved obviously thought differently, selecting the misison over some extremely attractive comptetitors. Phoenix will address a wide range of outstanding issues of surface chemistry that have been awaiting answers since the Viking missions, questions of key importance to astrobiology, gobal atmospheric dynamics, and future missions.

Meteorological and geophysical networks are very attractive missions, and I hope they will fly in the not too distant future. But they will not address the questions that Phoenix will address.

ESA and its member nations have been building space probes for more than 20 years. Helios, 1 & 2 Giotto, Cassinni-Huygens, Smart-1, Venus Express, Mars Express, Ulyessys, Rosetta... They are highly experienced and very capable with an excellent success record. There is no reason what so ever that they should not be able to have a successful Mars Rover and are well able to take on such a project.

Rovers are expensive and provding mobility costs payload. There is no point having a rover to test hypotheses that do not require mobility.

Jon

great link, thanks for that

No mission involved mobile rover on surface for now. Two missions involved stationary lander - one succes, one crater. I would do more stationary landers (mission a la Phoenix would be ideal) before trying mobile rover. This can be very costly new Martian crater with lack of that kind of experience.

BTW... I know about Rosetta, but:
1. Mission is on way, not deployed. Main mission even not begin!
2. Their rover will be deployed in completely different enviroment and is not certain that this would work anyway - see Hayabusa.
In other words, this mission don't count for now.

In other words, if you had avaliable many stationary landers a la Phoenix for price of two, you will throw these away? Strange. Oh, well.

No - one new rover = not one phoenix lander as you could not accomodate the Phoenix payload on a current rover design.

I can see why people want to bolt wheels onto everything, but you have to think about these things sensibly. Phoenix is a highly focused, short life mission. 6 months down the line, Phoenix will be dead because of the sun setting for several months. It's a short lived, focused science goals mission. It doesn't need wheels, and to deliver its payload on wheels would cost as much as say....MSL...and wheels would be madness because yeah, you could move from here..to here... but the northern polar plains are not like Meridiani or Gusev - there will not be much to rover to anyway - and you only have a few months before the sun sets for months and your mission is over.

Phoenix is the right mission for the right job in answering the issue of volitiles in the Martian soil

And you asked this of someone else.... yes... if Phoenix works I would rather it were done than two more MER's in its place ( infact, it would be impossible to do a single MER on the Phoenix budget according to MER PI Steve Squyres ) - and after Phoenix, I would rather we had one MSL rather than another two MER's. I am possibly the biggest 'fan' of MER around - I started a web forum dedicated to them three years ago ( which has now grown to something else ) - I've given talks just about the rovers to astronomy societies etc etc etc - but I also understand that they are designed for a specific job, and that the question of polar ice is not it.

More is better...but my definition of more is more science, not just the number of wheels on the ground.

I'm seing the same argument all over the place - put out by people who just don't understand the principles of putting payload on the surface, and by people who seem to think that the best way forward, is to do more of the same....which is just wrong.

Doug

Someone mention here that MSL-like (to accomodate payload, RTG etc) Phoenix would cost twice. So for price of two Phoenix mission we would have a new stationary Phoenix lander every, say, two weeks (drilling, taking measures and un-drilling would take some time). Assuming lifetime same as original MSL, this would be a lot of drills. A lot of stationary Phoenix landers for price of two of them.

For me, it is no-brainer, but oh well.

And how do you propose to operate MSL in the six month north polar night? Are you actually proposing a $1B rover that will have a mission of only 3 months before the long night sets in and kills it? For me, it's a no brainer. What you propose is both a waste of a rover and/or a waste of half a billion $ - depends how you look at it. But given that Phoenix is deep into ATLO, the majority of its budget is already spent, and to cancel it now would be a waste of something like $400M. What you are suggesting makes no scientific, financial or systematic sense.

Phoenix is the best way to go an answer the question of the north polar deposits. Doing it with a $1B rover would be a waste of a rover and a waste of money. I would put a lot of money on your initial response once a rover landed at the Phoenix site being "why did they send a rover here - it's all the same!"

Doug

I doubt that's the case. One of the reasons Phoenix was possible for a Scout price is that most of it was built already as part of an earlier landing program that was canceled. Building a rover with the same science capabilities would likely cost five or six times as much, not twice.

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You know what powers MSL, right? Right? But yes, polar version of MSL would be different from your regular MSL. And would be done after succesful use of first, regular MSLs. Remember that NASA engineers plans to use basic MSL design in all future rover missions.

You think that MSL is powered on solar panels? Or that version of MSL can't have more heaters and other small modifications? Or what?

Cite me. Where I talk about cancelling Phoenix? I talk about sense of that mission. In other word, that mission should never be started. As I said before, these are more interesting propositions within constraints of Scout money budget.

You suggest that comparing different drill sites is not important? Or you just know that ground is all the same over whole Mars polar cap?

To you all:
Decide how much would this cost. Two Phoenixs? 1 bln $? 5 Phoenixs? I would go with price tag for original MSL (considering that would be n-th MSL-class rover, so lower costs, but cost of doing modifications for polar enviroment would make this up).

Ohhhhhhhh K - we have another gaetanomarano amoungst us who confuses opinions with facts. Ho hum.


Doug

MaDeR,

The MSL was a pipe dream when the Phoenix mission was already in full force, using equipment already well suited for use on the MPL-type vehicle bus. I don't even see how this is an issue with you. So we should just have spent millions redesigning the MSL bus to incorporate the instruments or even spend millions more redesigning the instruments for the MSL bus? And in the process delaying the mission for years? Hey, I've got a $4,000 dollar toilet seat you might be interested in...

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