The next robotic probe scheduled to land on Mars is the Phoenix Mars Lander, a new rover built for the purpose
of touching and analyzing Martian water for the first time. Right now it is being prepared for launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
As a result of the partnership of universities from the US, Canada, Switzerland and Germany, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the aerospace industry, the new probe will land in Mars' northern polar region, covered with a thick ice cap and will dig into various layers of ice to collect and analyze samples.
Astronomers know that Mars once had liquid water on its surface and now scientists are keen to recover an actual sample to see if materials for life exist.
Furthermore, the probe is also supposed to shed some light on the environmental and climatic changes that turned the once warm and covered in water world into the cold, dry desert that exists today.
"We expect hard, icy soil right beneath the ground," planetary scientist and Phoenix researcher Ray Arvidson, with Washington University in St. Louis, said in an interview.
Having a small laboratory on board, Phoenix will look for salts in dissolved water, will break down minerals in the samples for chemical analysis and will hopefully tell scientists how hospitable Mars was many millions of years ago.
It also has a robotic arm that will be used to drill under the soil in search for ice. Martian ice is thought to be located at average depths of around 2 inches (5 cm) to 6 feet (2 meters), and it seems the composition of the soil directly affects the depth at which frozen water can form.
"It's likely that we'll get interesting results from the soil samples," Arvidson said.
Phoenix is scheduled to launch on August 3, 2007 and land on Mars in May 2008.
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