May 7, 2007 11:53 pm US/Mountain
Lockheed Mars Lander Leaves Colo. For Space Center
by Terry Jessup
AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) ―
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The latest probe headed to Mars was being packed for shipment Thursday, May 3, 2007 at Lockheed Martin's Waterton Canyon facility in Jefferson County.
NASA
The pride and joy of Lockheed-Martin Space Systems left Buckley Air Force Base Monday afternoon for its first leg of an historic journey to Mars.
Since all the local tests and the deep space simulations were over, the next stop for the 1500 pound Phoenix Mars Lander is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Phoenix was loaded Monday afternoon onto a C-17 transport plane for the flight to Florida, and then the real thing, a scheduled landing on Mars in May of 2008.
The Phoenix was built with the goal of finding signs of life on Mars, a planet that has been bitterly cold for millions of years.
"We're going to land near the north Arctic Circle on Mars," program manager Ed Sedivy said. "We're going to set down in an area that, during much of the season on Mars, is permafrost."
The Phoenix will dig trenches with its 7-foot-long robotic arm. It will be the first spacecraft to search for the organic compounds necessary for life.
"If we ever send men to Mars, you've got to have water," Sedivy said "And you have to have a habitable zone, and Phoenix is going to where we think may be a habitable zone."
The Phoenix is designed to land with a parachute and thrusters, slowing it from more than 7000 miles per hour to a gentle landing. A similar landing by Lockheed's Mars Polar Lander in 1999 ended in a crash when its thruster engines shut down too early.
"Some spacecraft don't make it," Gary Napier with Lockheed-Martin said." But boy, we've got high hopes for this one."
The Phoenix will spend 90 days on Mars before it is left behind with its power frozen by the Martian winter.
There have been six previous Mars missions, with four successes and two failures.
Along with possibly finding the chemical signature of life beyond Earth, the Lockheed engineers said the Phoenix lander could shed light on where the Polar Lander ended up, its crash was a great and expensive disappointment and they would be happy to find it.
The Phoenix Lander is scheduled for its Florida liftoff in August.
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