This
story was updated at 7:09 a.m. ET (1109 GMT)
CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla.
– NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander lit up the predawn Florida
sky Saturday, launching spaceward on a mission to determine whether the planet
could have once supported primitive life.
A United
Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket launched
Phoenix towards Mars at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (0926:34 GMT) from Pad 17A at the
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
The three-stage booster is bound for the flat northern plains of Vastitas Borealis
near the martian
north pole, where it is expected to dig into and sample the region's icy soil
with its eight-foot (2.4-meter) robotic arm.
"It's a
wonderful morning to go to Mars," NASA's Phoenix project manager Barry
Goldstein, of the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), just before liftoff.
As predicted, weather conditions were pristine for the early morning space
shot. The launch was delayed 24 hours earlier this week due to bad weather
during rocket fueling.
Just after
the supersonic crackle of the launch, Phoenix
officials let out gasps of excitement as the rocket careened toward Mars.
"This
is just about the coolest thing you could imagine," said Tim Gasparrini, deputy
program manager for the Phoenix
mission at Lockheed-Martin. "Phoenix
has been a long time coming, and this is really, really exciting."
Ray Arvidson,
co-chairman of the Phoenix Landing Site Working Group at Washington
University
in St.
Louis, said the successful launch
was an enormous relief.
"It
was a great launch, so it means we're going to reach a high northern latitude
site on Mars and actually sample ice for the first time," Arvidson said.
"Now we can get on with the business of doing great science on mars."
Bound
for Mars
The $420
million Phoenix mission is built on the ashes of NASA's canceled Mars
Surveyor 2001 Lander and the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, which crashed during
landing in December 1999. Much of the 772-pound (350-kilogram) probe and its
seven science instrument packages are built from hardware based on or recycled
from those two missions, mission managers have said.
"I
started working on this spacecraft in 1997, so it's incredibly gratifying to
watch it finally go up," Gasparrini
said. "It's not often that you get a second chance in life."
Phoenix
coasted through space between a series of engine burns before final spacecraft
separation about 90 minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft took longer than
mission managers expected to send a signal back to Earth, but eventually
notified mission control of its good launch trajectory and fully-operational
solar panels.
"It
seemed like an eternity," said NASA launch director Chuck Dovale. "We
weren't sure that Phoenix
would phone home, and she did and we're happy."
"The cruise
to Mars will be about nine and a half months," said Ed Sedivy, Phoenix
spacecraft program manager for Lockheed Martin - which built the Mars probe for
NASA - before liftoff. "And then we'll go through the descent, entry and
landing, which is the big enchilada for the mission."
Phoenix
is due to land on May 25, 2008, plunging through the martian atmosphere behind its
protective aeroshell
before deploying a parachute to slow its descent, extending three landing legs
and firing a set of pulse rockets to make a smooth touchdown on the surface of
Mars. Managed by JPL in Pasadena,
California,
the Phoenix
mission is
expected to last at least 90 Martian days, or sols.
If
successful, the landing will mark the first soft touchdown on Mars since NASA's
massive Viking lander
missions in the 1970s.
"It's going
to be a pretty flat plain, but still scientifically fascinating," Arvidson said of the
target zone.
Polar
science
Researchers
used imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other spacecraft to
make sure Phoenix's
landing site was relatively clear of rocks, steep slopes or other
conditions that could pose a hazard to the spacecraft. The landing site is at
latitude on Mars similar to that of northern Alaska
or Iceland
on Earth, mission managers
said.
In addition
to its backhoe-like robotic arm, Phoenix
is equipped with a series
of science tools to taste, sniff and peer at martian soil and ice. The probe won't
hunt for evidence of life itself, but rather the conditions required in which
microbes or other organisms could exist, mission scientists said.
"This is a
stepping stone for future missions because the number one NASA goal is
searching for life outside the Earth's boundaries inside the Solar System,"
said Peter Smith, Phoenix's
principal investigator at the University
of Arizona,
during a prelaunch
breifing. "And
this is a step in that direction."
Tiny ovens
and a wet chemistry laboratory mounted to Phoenix's
upper surface, or deck, will scan soil and ice samples for signs
of organic molecules and compounds - one ingredient useful for life - while
cameras and microscopes image the samples. The probe also carries a laser
ranging and detection (lidar)
instruments and other tools mounted to a meteorology mast to study Mars
weather.
But before Phoenix
can study Mars, the probe must first reach the red planet, which has proven to
be a challenge in the past. More than half of all Mars-bound missions have
failed to date, NASA has said.
"As smart
as we like to think we are, we're not clearly as smart as we need to be,"
Goldstein said before launch, calling Mars a spacecraft eater. "It really is a
difficult job. No matter how many times we land successfully, it will never be
routine."
SPACE.com Staff
Writer Dave Mosher reported from Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
Staff Writer Tariq Malik reported from New
York City.
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