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Education Task Force
Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS)
It's Almost Time for the Mars Phoenix Landing
Written by Fraser Cain
You probably already forgot, but NASA has a spacecraft heading to Mars right
now. The
Phoenix Mars Lander has been traveling for almost 10 months, and it's going to
be landing
on the surface of Mars in just a few days. Mark your calendar for May 25, 2008.
it's going
to be an exciting day.
If everything goes according to plan, the NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will enter
the
Martian atmosphere traveling 21,000 km/hour (13,000 mph). It must then slow
itself
down using a variety of techniques (aerobraking, parachutes and retro-rockets),
so that it
can softly touch down on the surface of Mars.
Assuming the spacecraft isn't somehow destroyed during the descent (like what
happened
to the Mars Polar Lander), the first signals could come back from the Mars
Phoenix Lander
as early as 2353 UTC (7:53 p.m. EDT).
ECIT2008 Session on The Science and Technology of Non-Agency Space Missions
Phoenix - The Case for Water
