Scientific Instruments Photo courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University Arizona/Texas A&M University How’s the Weather on Mars?
Because Mars is the planet closest to Earth, it has been host to numerous interplanetary missions. The Phoenix Mars mission was designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in Martian arctic ice-rich soil. As the Phoenix Mars spacecraft landed on the Martian surface in May 2008,...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.192.858 http://www.ansys.com/magazine/issues/vol4-iss1-2010/ualberta.pdf |
| Summary: | Because Mars is the planet closest to Earth, it has been host to numerous interplanetary missions. The Phoenix Mars mission was designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in Martian arctic ice-rich soil. As the Phoenix Mars spacecraft landed on the Martian surface in May 2008, communications stopped during the switch to orbiter relay. Two hours later, a sigh of relief erupted when data from the lander began streaming in. With space missions, there is only one shot at getting it right. Any minor flaw in the spacecraft or its instruments could result in the instantaneous loss of years of preparation and hundreds of millions of dollars. Canada’s contribution to the Phoenix Mars mission has been to provide the meteorological suite of instruments (MET) that measures the temperature |
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