UA-Backed Mars Spacecraft in Fla. As Launch Date Nears
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The Phoenix Mars Scout Mission lander set down on the same runway used by NASA’s space shuttles on Monday evening, the end of the first leg in its long journey to the red planet.
The flat-topped lander, inside a sterile and climate-controlled shipping container, was delicately stuffed into an Air Force C-17 around noon Monday at Buckley Air Force Base, outside Denver, for its circuitous cross-country trip to Cape Canaveral.
The University of Arizona’s Lunar & Planetary Lab is leading the science part of the Mars mission and is involved in the development of some of the instruments on board. The lander will look for water, study the Martian atmosphere and soil, and look for signs of life past and present.
The lander, built by Lockheed Martin’s Space Division in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo., was loaded into the 13-foot-tall, 13-foot-wide and 17-foot-long white metal box, and it was slowly winched up the massive transport’s rear loading ramp with just 2 inches to spare overhead.
The shipping container was moved from the contractor’s plant to the Air Force base Monday before dawn.
Air Force pilot Capt. Zach Hall said he and Maj. J. Scot Heathman plotted a flight route from Colorado to spare the delicate load the violent weather that was tearing up the central part of the country.
The C-17, the Air Force’s heaviest-payload hauler, left Denver heading north-northeast for Iowa, passing over Chicago and continuing east before turning south down the East Coast and over Georgia, then into the space center.
Tim Welton of Lockheed-Martin said the same 9,600-pound shipping container — that includes the 1,200-pound weight of the lander — also was used to transport a couple of other spacecraft with UA connections: Cassini and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The UA’s HiRISE camera is one of the instruments aboard the Reconnaissance Orbiter.
HiRISE images were used to choose a landing site for the Phoenix Mars lander.
In Florida, the spacecraft will be taken to a clean room this morning in preparation for its early August launch atop a Delta 2 rocket.
Phoenix, which is packed with a camera and science gear, is expected to land on Mars’ northern polar region in late May 2008.
On StarNet: Watch "Up From the Ashes," a mini-documentary exploring how the UA was chosen to lead the Mars mission’s science, at azstarnet.com/mars
With the Phoenix Mars lander now safely at the Kennedy Space Center, preparations are under way for its planned August launch. Phoenix Mars Mission: The Journey