14 DAY TRIAL // Mars has been mankind's obsession for a long time now. It's been the subject of thousands of science-fiction novels, movies, comics, scientific papers and the list could go on. Yet, the secrets of our mysterious neighbor are about to be revealed.
NASA has just announced its plans to send a robotic probe towards the red planet, scheduled to touch down in the Martian polar region during May 2008.
The stationary-type probe, code named Phoenix Mars, will have the mission of analyzing the soil of our neighboring planet, by digging into the frozen terrain and scooping up soil samples. For this, it has been fitted with various scientific instruments, including a panoramic camera and a specially designed robotic arm, which may actually prove to be out first means of contact with other life forms.
This is because the main purpose of this mission is to determine whether water, and perhaps, bacteria or other some other type of "ET" is to be found on Mars.
The name of this 386 million dollars project holds some truth to it, at least with respect to its mythological meaning. That is because the landing unit for Phoenix was built to fly as part of the 2001 Mars Surveyor program.
Unfortunately, the program was scrapped after the famous disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander in 1999. The Polar Lander lost contact during a landing attempt near the planet's South Pole, after a malfunctioning of its rocket engine, thus causing the spacecraft to plunge down 130 feet towards its doom.
Phoenix is scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in August 2007 and reach Mars nine months later. This mission, supported by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from Pasadena, is the first step in NASA's Scout Program, which has the purpose of exploring Mars using relatively "low" funds.