Phoenix Special > Phoenix Launch Postponed

The Phoenix launch, predicted for Friday, the 3rd, was delayed 24 hours due to bad weather expected for today, that will not permit to pump storable propellants into the rocket's second stage at pad 17A. The stage's oxidizer tank was filled this morning. Upcoming thunderstorms originated the cancellation of hydrazine fuel loading into the stage later today as it was previously planned.

The launch has been rescheduled for Saturday morning. Liftoff will be possible during a pair of one-second launch windows at 5:26 and 6:02 a.m. EDT.

Source: Spaceflight Now
For more information about the launch window please consult the Launch Window Chart

Today we will have a different kind of approach to the Phoenix Mission.

Stuart Atkinson, Astronomy Author and Outreach Educator, but above everything, a man truly passionate for space exploration, bring us science in a surprising new vestment: poetry.

FROM FIRE TO ICE

Throughout history and myth my kind
have always loved and lived in fire.
Screeching creatures with feathers ablaze,
breathing and bathing in flickering flames,
born in infernos of orange and gold…
but I am the first Phoenix ever to feel cold,
the first to stand on ice instead of ash
and watch Earth dash across an alien sky,
all memory of warmth fading away
as legends always do.

Unlike the Twins that came before me,
galloping giddily round Gusev and veering
without fear around Victoria’s ragged edge
I will not rush wildly o’er this frozen land but,
like a statue hewn from Barsoom’s polar ice, stand
and watch the sols go by in serene and stately silence.
I will scale no ancient hills but thrill to the sight
of a molten gold Sun burning in a burnt umber sky,
watch starlight dancing off Mars’ hoarfrosted wastes,
smile at Earth blazing like a lantern, guiding me
through the darkest borealis night
towards another lavender dawn.

No. Once settled I shall not move from here.
I have no spiked and whirring wheels to steer
me round outcrops or over rippling dunes,
my view will never change: sol after sol
my cameras will take sepia-tinted portraits
of the same Sun-blasted rocks, same impact-shocked
stones and boulders bare.
Unlike mere horizon-chasing MERs, which cannot
concentrate on Mars’ terrain for longer than one day
I will stare out with my unblinking eyes
across the same high latitude landscape until I die,
savouring the slight shifting of the light,
the subtle, silky hues each hour of the sol
this planet chooses to reveal to me, payment
for being peaceful and not tearing up its land
with tracks into open wound trenches.
I have no wheels to peel back Mars’ flesh,
to flense it like a whale…

What will I find? What will I see?
Such things are mysteries to me as I stand
here, all alone, a Phoenix carved from Easter Island stone,
a firebird exiled to a frozen world, my
glittering silicon wings unfurled to
drink heat from a distant star
allowing me to dig with talon and claw
into the planet’s desiccated dirt in search
of ice to thaw and drink, quenching Man’s thirst
for knowledge of how Life may once have
thrived on this distant, dusty place.
So, curious children of Earth, turn your faces
to the sky and think of me, send me
images of fire and flame to warm
my frost-bitten feathers and face
as I begin another day…

Phoenix I may well be named but
as fleeting as a butterfly’s will be my life;
one sad sol, when my work here is done
the dimming Sun will grow too cold and low
to let me live, and with one final fractured
view of Mars through my fading eyes
I’ll fall into a sleep as deep and dark
as Ultreya’s shifting sands, never to see
the salmon sky or glitter stars again.
Condemned to endless years of exile
at the pole, layers of snow and ice will cover me,
smothering me, age after age until all trace of me
has gone, leaving me embedded in the white, as fine
and fragile as the crystals in a geode’s core
and just as perfectly concealed…

And yet… perhaps millennia from now, if Mars’
distant children somehow turn this rusted, dusted world
into a globe of glowing, growing green I’ll see
the Sun again and, emerging from my icy tomb
like David from Michelangelo’s marble womb,
rejoice at the touch of warm human hands once more,
and this phoenix will feel Sol’s loving fire again…!


© Stuart Atkinson 2007

If you enjoyed reading Atkinson's words please feel free to visit his blog and The Verse, his spacepoetry dedicated site.

“No-one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No-one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes; and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.”

This was my first introduction to the planet Mars, in the last years of the 1970’s. My father played Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds over and over, conjuring up images of a distant world populated by terrifying creatures plotting the destruction of mankind. I had many nightmares that I would wake up surrounded by those slithering Martians.
Although Richard Burton’s melodic voice captured the fear of the unknown, by that stage much was known about Mars. The flybys of the late 1960s and the Viking landers in 1975 finally put away the idea of alien civilization on Mars. Yet we still are enthralled by the idea that life may have existed there in the distant past or may still exist underneath the surface.

Since the 1970s, there have been many further missions to Mars that have captured our imagination. Some were spectacular successes that reminded us all why we should be exploring our universe and the sheer joy of discovery. Others were catastrophic failures that heaped derision and scorn upon the whole enterprise.

Nevertheless, the recent unprecedented successes of NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers (still functioning after three and a half years on Mars, even though they were designed to last only 90 days), have raised our expectations that we are finally getting the knowledge and expertise to explore Mars.

Next month, NASA will launch another lander, called Phoenix, to the red planet, this time looking at its arctic ice. There is much to learn there, including if the water contains traces of life. One of the most interesting mission objectives is to assess if the region can be habitable. This is the kind of information that we will need to gather in advance of sending astronauts and establishing colonies.

I hope that this new journey to Mars will add to the general interest in space exploration. We need inspirational events to encourage our children to take an interest in science and engineering and for some of them to carve out careers in the space industry. Realistically, this isn’t going to happen with this mission. The print media will cover the launch and it may get some exposure on television. From my own perspective, I wasn’t aware of this mission until relatively recently. If my experience is anything to go by, then the vast majority of people will never hear about it unless something goes wrong or Phoenix actually finds life in the frozen soil.

Given the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and engineers involved in creating both the lander itself and its payload of interesting experiments, it is frustrating that more is not made of this opportunity to engage with the public. Although there are three European experiments on board, this is not an ESA-NASA joint mission. As a result, there is no general engagement with the European public about this mission by ESA.
Nevertheless, it is encouraging to the scientific community in Europe that experiments can be included in a NASA mission. These teams have had to compete against the best in the world to be selected. This should certainly be used to encourage interest and opportunity.

When I look through my telescope at Mars, I see a small distant orange ball that seems to be waiting patiently for visitors. Until the day that people are walking on the surface, we will have to send our surrogate machines to do the work. May they enlighten us, inspire us and chase away those childish nightmares.

Stephen Oman

Stephen Oman is a member of the European public and is interested in space exploration. He is an advocate of greater engagement between the scientific community and the general public. He is also a moderator of an online discussion group, Europe In Space , dedicated to everyone interested in debating European space explorations.

He lives in Dublin, Ireland, and works in the software industry.

EXPLORING SPACE ETHICS

Saara Reiman. M. Soc. Sci
University of Helsinki

From a philosophical perspective, space exploration seems to be yet another great unknown.

The Phoenix mission provides a good background for an attempt to map some topical questions. It also illustrates, why, as we advance scientifically and technologically, it is also important to involve other than natural and engineering sciences in space exploration effort. Psychology and social sciences have already been identified as fields that can provide important contribution to space exploration. Philosophical questions related to space exploration have not yet been addressed that systematically. However, they are very much around, and many of them should be properly addressed rather sooner than later.


Is Space Environment?

Until very recently, space exploration ethics has been understood as a subspecies of ethics of science. While ethics of science can certainly be applied to many characteristics of space exploration, in order to give a full ethical analysis on space exploration, we need to consider a wider perspective, one that combines ethics of science with environmental ethics.
First, we must ask the elementary question: Is space environment? If it is, then environmental ethical concepts- perhaps derived from basic concepts such as "interests", "harm and benefit", "inherent value", even "environmental virtue", can be used to assess such unique traits of space exploration ethics that ethics of science is not equipped to discuss.
It seems, that the answer to this question may not be simple: on one hand, space can not be regarded as environment in the same sense as ecosystems and life on Earth can. However, space does share some similarities with our common concept of environment. For example, we can intelligibly ask, should we consider interests of future generations when exploiting resources of space? Are there things that can be considered as natural wonders that ought to be protected? Could we for example build all the mining tunnels we want to under Olympus Mons, or are there good reasons to limit exploiting the area?

At the moment, the values most often cited in space exploration discussion are scientific (epistemic) and economical values. However, in order to get a complete understanding on what space and space exploration could mean to humans, and what exactly is the impact and meaning of the space exploration endeavor to humankind, we should also examine new perspectives, like cultural values and the possibilities space exploration provides for uniting humankind and promoting peace.


Understanding Life

The Phoenix mission aims at understanding life. In what sort of conditions life is able to develop and exist? How it has actually developed outside Earth? How it might have been destroyed, if it has indeed been present on Mars in the past?
But why do we want to understand life in the first place? First and perhaps best understood are scientific interests: we want to understand, because we believe that such understanding would be valuable knowledge in many ways. But there are also cultural and human interests present: the need to understand ourselves and our place in the universe. Interestingly, there are also environmental interests: if we can actually give an account on how all life has been destroyed on another planet, we might be able to prevent something similar happening on Earth as a result of our activities. If we are able to see an alien landscape and to say "Once, here was life, but no more." perhaps this new meaning could motivate us to appreciate and preserve flourishing of life on Earth.

The Phoenix mission is particularly interesting because Mars is among the few places in our Solar system where the conditions might be favorable (or at least may once have been favorable) for development of life. When Phoenix mission brings us more information about the Martian environment, new ethical questions become worthy of serious philosophical consideration.
If finding evidence of life on Mars or elsewhere from our solar system becomes more a matter of time and resources than science fiction, we must be able to answer a whole new set of questions, once again starting from the elementary: "How should we treat that life?" Life outside Earth would be one of the most important scientific discoveries ever made by humankind. Therefore, any answer given to the big ethical question should be one that stands the test of time and changing ideologies. Anything we do to extraterrestrial lifeforms
should be justifiable as well as possible also in the long term. Phoenix mission will hopefully give us not only new data needed to construct a scientifically sound ethical account, but also a better understanding on how urgent this task is.


Space exploration down to Earth

Space exploration is one of the latest developments in the tradition of Western science. It is also perhaps the most ambitious scientific project ever undertaken by humans. Phoenix mission is one step on a road that will hopefully one day lead to people going to Mars, perhaps even establishing a permanent presence there.
A manned flight to Mars means also a mission of unprecedented magnitude. However, this new scale of magnitude sets new challenges. How big missions can we undertake as separate nations, as separate space powers? It is certain that all space exploring powers have their own, unique interests. But it is in my opinion equally certain that we need to start moving from the framework of national exploration towards space exploration that is humankind's common effort.
As costs of space missions keep rising, also the question of justification of ambitious exploration missions becomes more and more topical. For a scientist-driven community, epistemic values and technological challenges are naturally important, but it is not evident that society at large is so enthusiastic about these things. But some might value a safer, more peaceful world that space exploration could promote by providing new forums for international cooperation. Pointing out that space exploration produces also technologies that can improve our everyday lives might appeal to many. Cultural impact of space exploration is harder to measure, but it certainly is there. We may get some clue of that by asking ourselves, how knowing that people have gone to the Moon has affected us.

Has it encouraged some people to educate themselves better?

Has it given us hope in a world full of bad news?

In short, has it pushed humankind forward.

In any case, the successful arguments for continuing ambitious space exploration can be discovered only after we have gained a good understanding on what it really means to us as individuals, as nations and as members of human race to go out there.

Hope to find life on Mars reborns with the Phoenix

Comment by Susana Direito (Faculty of Sciences and Technology, New University of Lisbon, Portugal) on behalf of the Portuguese Astrobiology Working Group (PAWG) coordinated by Prof. Maria Eugénia Webb, the Portuguese representative at the European Astrobiology Network Association.
This group is currently studing the 'Mars Exobiological Potential' as part of MAGIC project (Mars Atmospherical Geophysical and ExobIological Characterisation), financed by the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology ‘Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia’) and with the Recognised Cooperating Laboratory status for the Mars Express mission.

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Every mission to Mars brings further hope in finding extinct or extant life on this planet.
PAWG is currently studying the martian exobiological potential and we are therefore very curious about the results of Phoenix Mars mission.

There are very important aspects to this mission: the fact that it will be the first time a mission will have direct contact with Martian ice and the fact it’s planned to bring further understanding on martian water history, and as we know, water in liquid state is one of the pre-requisites for the existence of life.

In addition, the previous methane detection in the martian atmosphere generated an interesting discussion on the possibility of life on our neighbour planet. The necessity to prepare martian space missions that are designed to corroborate this methane detection and possibly detect longer hydrocarbons and other complex organic molecules become thus of great importance.

This 'spectrum' was recorded in the areas where the methane concentration is higher. The black line shows the measured spectrum, compared to the computed methane spectrum (red line) and indicating 35 parts per billion of methane in the atmosphere. In other areas, the measured average of methane at Mars is only 10 parts per billion. Credits: ESA/ASI/PFS team. More information here.

For example, the study of isotopes, such as the measurement of the isotopic ratio 13C/12C of martian methane may help to clarify its origin. Indeed, living organisms biologically ‘fix’ the lighter isotope, carbon 12, over the heavier carbon 13. On the other hand, methane that is generated by abiogenic processes shows preference for the carbon 13 isotope.

Phoenix to be launched in August 2007 will land near the martian north polar permanent ice cap and will carry several instruments. One of them, TEGA - Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer built by the University of Arizona and University of Texas, is a high-temperature oven and a mass spectrometer instrument that will be capable of measuring isotopes ratios for several elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen). The instrument's ovens will heat slowly the soil and ice samples at a constant rate. A process that will reveal the evolution of phases of the materials: from a solid to a liquid to a gas phase. When the temperature of the ovens reaches 1000ºC, the volatile sample materials are vaporized and transported to a mass spectrometer where they will be analyzed.

The TEGA Engineering Qualification Model matrix assembly shown without the manifold. Image Credit: NASA/UA. More information here.

Therefore, we expect that TEGA, besides being capable of verifying the presence of water in solid phase and measure humidity, will be also capable of identifying altered minerals (ex. carbonates), hydrocarbon molecules and other very significant organic molecules which are of great importance in our quest to find life.

As a final note, and in the name of PAWG, we want to salute and wish good luck to the Phoenix team.

HD 189733b, the First of a Kind > With Giovanna Tinetti

Solid evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our Solar System has been achieved.
The gas giant HD 189733b, discovered in 2005, 63 light-years away, in the constellation Vulpecula, is the first of a kind.

By using Spitzer, scientists from around the world observed the planet and its parent star and, from the results obtained, they reached the conclusion that as the planet’s tenuous outer atmosphere passed along its star, the starlight absorbed revealed a distinctive pattern: HD 189733b atmosphere absorbed less infrared radiation at the 3.6 micrometres wavelength.

In spite of this hot-Jupiter not being a good candidate to look for life, the discovery marks a whole new ground on our path to understand and to learn about the multitud of worlds, waiting, patientely, in the seas of distance, outside of our solar system.

Even if this was expected in a near future due to the present technological advances, this is, definitely a “major step in the study of exoplanets”, as stated to spacEurope by Giovanna Tinetti, leader of the team responsible for the achievement, former ESA fellow at Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris, France; currently at University College London, UK, that kindly, shared some of her available time to answer some questions.

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Giovanna Tinetti, University College London, UK

When asked about how does it feel like to be part of this particular discovery, Tinetti resumed the steps towards the great day, one she will always remember...

The presence of water on hot-Jupiters was predicted few years ago by photochemical models.
Mao-Chang Liang and Yuk Yung (Caltech, US), co-authors to our paper, published few articles on the subject on the Astrophysical Journal.
Then water was hunted on hot-Jupiters by several observers. The reason they might have not been successful, was they looked for its signature either with primary transit in the visible (quite hard to do, the signature is quite weak in the visible) or in the infrared, but with secondary transit method, which might not always be the best approach if you want to trace molecular features, as you need the cooperation of the thermal profile.

The idea of hunting for water with primary transit method but in the infrared is a pretty recent one, I published it on the Astrophysical journal early this year. We obtained Spitzer telescope time to test my predictions, and bingo: the observations matched pretty well the theoretical calculations. But at that point we only had 2 points to match the theoretical spectrum.

For me the best day was when we heard of an additional observation of the same planet, same technique done by the group of Charbonneau at Harvard. When I saw the result published by Knutson et al., which was matching perfectly the theoretical predictions and our previous observations, I felt very excited. That was the conclusive evidence that water is there.
I do not think I can ever forget that day.


Was the gas giant HD 189733b chosen by any particular reason?

Yes, its star is the brightest and closest to us, and its spectrum is slighty shifted to the red, making it an excellent target for Spitzer. The planet is very hot and has one of the lowest density, making it one of the best to be probed with primary transit technique.

You have stated that "Water is the only molecule that can explain that behaviour," could you be more specific about this particular point?

Well, that particular signature could not be explained by other major molecules absorbing in the infrared, e.g. methane, ammonia, co2, co. only water has that particular spectral behavior.

HD 189733b map. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/H. Knutson

What might be the consequences regarding the study of other known hot jupiters and, eventually, rocky planets?

I hope we can repeat similar measurements with similar targets, to compare their characteristics, and starting comparative exoplanetology. For rocky planets, we might need to wait a little bit.


I believe that it would be impossible for Spitzer to obtain the same results with an Earth-sized planet?... What results can scientists expect to reach and what work can be done before the James Webb Space Telescope and further ahead with Darwin?

For planets with a heavier atmosphere than hydrogen, the technique we used might not be optimal. We probably need either to wait for the next generation of space telescopes, The James Webb, or for missions able to perform direct detection, such as the SEE-Coast or the Darwin mission concepts (to cite the ESA/European ones).
I believe the next decade will be a golden age for exoplanetary characterization.

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The original paper, ‘Water vapour in the atmosphere of a transiting extrasolar planet’, by G. Tinetti, A. Vidal-Madjar, M-C. Liang, J-P. Beaulieu, Y.L. Yung, S. Carey, R. Barber, J. Tennyson, I. Ribas, N. Allard, G. Ballester, D.K. Sing, F. Selsis, appears in the 12 July 2007 issue of Nature.

Phoenix and the boundary of life on Mars

This August the Phoenix lander is to be launched for Mars, and like it's mythological namesake will literally rise from the ashes of Mars Polar Lander and Mars Surveyor atop a pillar of flame.

This latest earthly explorer to be sent to the red planet is set to carry out a host of geological and meteorological measurements, important for understanding the interaction between Mars' polar regions and the global climate. But the Phoenix mission has also got astrobiologists very excited. The landing zone for Phoenix has been targeted to the martian polar region somewhere between the latitudes 65º and 72º North, which on Earth would correspond to the chilly climes of Northern Alaska. Mars is not blanketed by the greenhouse effect of a thick atmosphere, and the arctic plains here are truly cold -- during the winter the air itself freezes out on the ground as a thick frost of solid carbon dioxide ('dry ice'). But paradoxically, this is exactly the sort of location where astrobiologists think martian life may be still surviving today.
The possibility of the prior, or perhaps even present, existence of life on Mars is wedded to the presence of water, and we suspect from earlier probes that there are substantial amounts of water ice locked up in the martian soil, or regolith, in both the northern and southern polar regions. Nearer the equator the warmth of the sun has long since sublimed away any water near the surface -- with such a low air pressure water cannot exist as a liquid and sublimes straight from ice into vapour and escapes from the ground. Such numbingly-cold conditions are also very favourable for the long-term preservation of any microbes -- cryopreserved in the permafrost in the same way microbiologists routinely store cells in terrestrial laboratories.

In this image we can see the texture of the ground in the area chosen for the Phoenix landing site.
More information here. Photo Credits: HiRISE

No probe yet has successfully touched-down in these polar regions (a consequence of orbital dynamics makes it very difficult to reach high latitudes), and so Phoenix promises some very original results. Furthermore, Phoenix will be the first lander since the Viking probes of the 1970s to be able to access beneath the martian surface, using a specially designed digger arm and scoop. Another consequence of the thin martian atmosphere is that it lets through high levels of solar ultraviolet light to bathe the ground, and this is believed to have created very chemically-oxidising conditions in the martian soil. Any organic molecules, the building blocks of life as we know it, will be rapidly destroyed in the martian topsoil. Indeed, the Viking landers could find no evidence of organics at all in the soil they scooped up for analysis. This is only to say, however, that no organics were found at these two specific locations on Mars down to the detection-levels of the Viking instruments. Phoenix will be landing far away from either of the Viking landing sites, and so will fall onto completely fresh hunting grounds. And hopefully its digging arm will get deep enough to reach beneath this sterilising layer. This digging arm has been exquisitely cleaned and sterilised to thoroughly remove any traces of Earth's biota -- you wouldn't want to go all the way to Mars to hunt for signs of alien biochemistry, only to be fooled by gunk falling off your own dirty sleeve...
The northern plains are also of particular astrobiological interest because some researchers claim evidence for an ancient ocean filling this basin during the earliest periods of martian history [see a recent paper on this in last month's Nature].

If Phoenix finds fine sediments of mud and silt it will lend support to this exciting hypothesis. Alternatively, coarse sediments of sand might indicate the past action of flowing water, especially if the grains are rounded and size-sorted, as would be expected from the action of flowing water. Any evidence of the prior presence of liquid water would be a profound result for astrobiologists. Ancient expanses of surface water, as already inferred at Meridiani Planum by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, might have provided a cosy environment for the emergence of life, which could remain preserved to this day in the icy soil around Phoenix's landing site. Even more exciting is the possibility that dormant life in the arctic plains may be able to periodically reanimate from its frozen slumber. Unlike Earth, the tilt of the martian rotational axis (which gives the cycling of day and night) is unstable and tumbles back and forth over long time periods. As the arctic regions tip forward toward the sun the additional heating, and possibly thickening of the atmosphere, would produce a warmer surface climate that may allow thawing of the permafrost and a transient burst of activity in martian microbes.

We know of terrestrial cold-loving ('psychrophilic') microbes that continue growing at –20ºC, and there is even mounting evidence that some ultra-hardy cells remain metabolically active far below this temperature. Although it is true to say that, unlike Viking, Phoenix will carry no specifically-biological experiments (it will not have the capability to attempt to sample and incubate martian bacteria) it is still of paramount astrobiological importance. The major role of this probe will be in assessing the habitability of the martian subsurface. If Phoenix does dig deep enough to reach the expected underground ice it will constitute the first on-the-spot direct examination of martian water - all of the orbiter and lander discoveries so far have inferred its existence. Once scooped up and delivered to its on-board scientific instruments, Phoenix will also analyse the chemistry and mineralogy of the soil, including determining the composition of life-giving elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, and attempt to sniff-out any organic volatiles. The physical environment of the wet soil will also be looked at, to check that it doesn't isn't laced with hazardous oxidants, or too acidic, or alkaline, or salty for known life to tolerate.

An artistic view of the Phoenix at the beggining of the surface operations phase of the mission. Image Credits: Phoenix Mars Mission

This ice-soil boundary beneath the martian surface represents an enticing potential habitat in the solar system, a region where extraterrestrial life may persist even today and be awaiting detection by probes following Phoenix's lead.

Lewis Dartnell, spacEurope's resident astrobiologist, is a researcher at CoMPLEX (the Centre for Mathematics & Physics in the Life Sciences Experimental Biology), at University College London and the author of 'Life in the Universe: A Beginner's Guide'.

* Perron, J. T., J. X. Mitrovica, et al. (2007). "Evidence for an ancient martian ocean in the topography of deformed shorelines." Nature 447(7146): 840.

AKARI > Peeking Deeper

There are some really great, beautiful news coming from AKARI, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission with the participation of several european partners, including ESA participation.

An impressive release of images, including an all-sky infrared map, and data has take place.

According to ESA's release this results will help to "to gain a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems."

Several questions are raised...how will this be possible? Are there already any results? How do this results help us in the process of understanding our own evolution? To provide some more information about this point spacEurope invited Alberto Salama, ESA - ISO and AKARI Project Scientist, who has been already in this blog in a previous occasion, to feed our thoughts with some words.

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"Light from stars that were born during the early evolution of the Universe can be observed at infrared wavelengths because of a cosmological Doppler effect.

The most luminous phenomena in the infrared range can be those of newly-forming galaxies (protogalaxies), where large-scale star formation is taking place. AKARI will make a systematic survey of tens of thousand of galaxies.

This image shows the entire sky in infrared light at nine micrometres. More information here. Image Credits: JAXA

In our own Galaxy, stars are still being born, though the number of new stars is small. AKARI will search for such newborn stars in dark clouds of dust and gas. It will investigate where and how a star forms, and how the star is structured, taking note of its mass and composition. Gas and dust around a newborn star are thought to be the seeds of planet formation.

Since this gas and dust can best be observed in the infrared range, the process of planet formation will be another one of AKARI's important assignments.

AKARI is expected to return to Earth vast quantities of data that will be fundamental to today’s astronomical research: data that may detect hitherto unknown comets, allow us to monitor dying stars, and make other observations of our Solar System.

I can add here that with ESA' Infrared Space observatory ISO it has been already found that only evolutionary models could explain the observed IR fluxes in the surveys made over specific areas of the sky apparently empty of material close to us. It had been found that a very violent star formation took place in the very early stages of the Universe.

The Cosmic infrared background we see can in fact be explained by the sum of all these individual infrared contributions (galaxies).

With AKARI, similar studies will be made on a scale as large as the whole observable Universe."

For more information regarding the AKARI mission please consult JAXA's dedicated webpage.

The FAMARS instrument,
an AFM for planetary exploration, part II
With Daniel Parrat, Institute of Microtechnology University of Neuchâtel

Sensor chip
The microfabricated sensor chip consists of eight cantilevers with integrated, piezoresistive deflection sensors. These cantilevers are aligned in a row and mounted on the scanner with two tilt angles relative to the sample. Thus, they can be engaged one after the other to provide redundancy in case of tip or cantilever failure. Silicon tips at the end of the cantilevers are used for probing the sample. Images can be recorded in both, static and dynamic operation mode. In the latter case, excitation of the resonance frequencies of the active cantilever is achieved by vibrating the whole chip by means of a piezoelectric disk.


Figure 5. FAMARS chip. The cantilever on the right is the first to be used. A silicon tip is located at the end of each cantilever. Click to enlarge.

The electronic board measures 300mm x 110mm x 10mm and weights 190g. It is a digital controller which generates the feedback and scanning signals. The onboard processor executes AFM specific, low-level commands and communicates via a serial interface with the Lander computer. The latter sequentially requests the execution of the low-level commands, based on predefined, special algorithms for autonomous AFM measurements. Measured images are stored on the Lander computer from where they will be downloaded to Earth via one of the satellites currently orbiting Mars.
The measured data for the whole mission is down linked only once every day.


Figure 6. Image of the controller board (300mm x 110mm). Click to enlarge.

Preliminary measurements
In order to interpret the data that hopefully will be sent back from Mars, we currently perform calibration and characterization experiments. For example, we evaluate the capabilities of FAMARS by imaging small spheres (typically less than 2 microns), put also other samples, such has small crystals with characteristic shapes will be looked at. Typical images are composed of 256 x 256 data points. An example is shown in figure 7, where silica beads (about 100 nm in diameter) are imaged with FAMARS. The beads appear to have an oval distortion, which we attribute to the imperfect shape of the probing tip.


Figure 7. 4µm x 4µm AFM image of silica nanobeads taken with FAMARS. Click to enlarge.

Measurements procedure on Mars
Before we can look at samples, they have to be delivered to the microscope station. This will be done by a robotic arm to which a scoop is attached. The contents of this scoop will be poured onto a section of the sample wheel, where a set of six substrates will receive the particles.

The substrates are designed to distinguish between different adhesion mechanisms and include magnets, sticky polymers, and “buckets" for bulk sampling. The wheel will then be rotated, presenting the samples to the optical microscope and the AFM. Upon power up of the AFM, the Lander computer downloads the operation software into the RAM of the AFM controller. It then sequentially requests the execution of low-level commands, based on predefined, special algorithms. The latter consist of block-level commands which allow autonomous measurements. First, the health of all cantilevers is verified by checking the integrated deflection sensors. If the active cantilever is alive, it is initialized in dynamic mode. The vibration amplitude is verified to ensure that the dynamic mode is usable. If the amplitude is too weak, the AFM either initializes the lever for the static mode or aborts, depending on what is asked by the operator.

After the mode selection, all the parameters of the feedback loop (setpoint, proportional and integral gains, etc) are set for the approach procedure. The sample, which is placed in front of the AFM by a rotation of the sample wheel, is then slowly stepped towards the AFM tip. When the sample enters in contact with the tip, i.e. when the setpoint of the feedback loop is reached, the AFM controller sends a signal to the MECA controller to stop the stepper-motor. Then some of the parameters are adjusted in order to take an AFM image after the first image, other images can be taken by doing zooms in areas of interest. When the measurements are finished, the wheel is moved away from the AFM.

In order to have a right interpretation of the acquired data, AFM measurements of a Martian sample will be preceded and followed by measurements of calibration targets. These two substrates are also located on the sample wheel but will not be exposed to soil particles. They comprise a silicon grid with a period of 10 microns and an array of sharp silicon tips. The silicon grid allows calibrating the size and the orthogonality of the scan and the array of tips allows having an estimation of the AFM tip’s shape. Figure 8 shows AFM images of both calibration targets.


Figure 8. AFM image (tapping mode) of a) a calibration grid in silicon (period = 10 microns) and b) an array of silicon tips (period = 2.1 microns) with few contaminations. The height of these images is coded in a grey scale. Click to enlarge.

State of the project
The first measurements showed that the FAMARS instrument, in combination with the delivery system of MECA, should allow characterizing Martian particles with high resolution. FAMARS passed successfully all environmental tests. The flight model was delivered to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2005 and is now integrated on the Phoenix Lander, waiting for the launch. Future work will mainly consist in characterizing the AFM in end-to-end tests and cataloging different samples and Mars-analogues using test-bed set-ups.

History
In April 2001, NASA's Mars Surveyor Lander, intended to realize several in-situ experiments on Mars, was ready to be launched, but was cancelled due to the back to back loss of two NASA missions in the end of 1999, Mars climate Orbiter (MCO) and Mars Polar Lander (MPL). On the Surveyor Lander, a payload called MECA (Mars Environment Compatibility Assessment) was designed to gauge possible physical dangers that the Martian surface may present to human explorers. MECA included a microscopy station, in particular the FAMARS instrument.

After cancellation of the mission, the MECA consortium sought for a new flight opportunity by joining the PHOENIX project in a competition for the first Scout mission to Mars, announced by NASA in 2002. The Phoenix mission was selected, and MECA will see its second chance for a journey to Mars onboard of the 2007 Lander. As Phoenix is designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Martian arctic's ice-rich soil, the former meaning of “MECA” is no more appropriate and “MECA” now stands for “Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer”.

Acknowledgements
This work is financially supported by the Space Center at EPFL, the Wolfermann-Nägeli Foundation and the Canton and Republic of Neuchâtel”.

The first part of this article can be read here.

Dawn Mission Rescheduled > Reactions

Dawn, the mission designed to explore the Vesta and Ceres, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt has been, after several delays, rescheduled to the month of September. It was last Saturday, the 7th of July that NASA's Science Mission Directorate officials, Dawn mission managers, the mission’s principal investigator, and with the agreement of the NASA Administrator, that the measure was taken.The limited launch opportunities for Dawn in July and the upcoming launch of the Phoenix towards Mars in August are presented as the main reasons for the decision, but, in spite of this all the scientific objectives will not be altered. The hardest issue to deal with is the fact of the delay originates an additional cost of $20 to $25 million to the mission, there can be some saving if the launch occurs early in September rather than closer to the end of the launch period which extends to the month of October.


Dawn spacecraft will investigate in detail Ceres and Vesta, two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formations. Credit: NASA/UCLA.

Dawn mission, leaded by NASA, counts with some european contribution, it was under this perspective that SpacEurope asked for some feedback on this delay and possible consequences for the future.
Dr. Horst Uwe Keller, FC Team Leader, Co-Investigator, Max Plänk Institute told spacEurope that “The launch window was too short, the time left too short, the impact on following missions too strong”.
Being planned to launch firstly in June, consecutive delays brought Dawn to the July scenario where the FC Team Leader believes that the “chance to launch is rather low and rather risky”, the same oppinion is shared by Dr. Gerhard Neukum, Co-Investigator, FU Berlin, for whom the situation is being faced postively among the team where the “spirit is very good”, Dr. Neukum pointed out that “a September launch appears to be more secure than forcing the launch into a period of only very few days launch window in July when the weather is rather unpredictable.”

Still according to the Dr. Keller “the first slip to June 20 put us already out of the preferred launch interval.” Facing this the future launch opportunity is awaited with even more expectation, “the second window Sept/Oct. is much more attractive.”

MPS Co-Investigator, when questioned about weather conditions stated that the ”launch will be in the morning” what is indicated as “much better weather wise”.
To conclude Horst Uwe Keller sintethyzed what this reschedule represents...For DAWN the shift is good, it is just costly.”
May the results obtained make us forget the last part of that sentence...

The FAMARS instrument,

an AFM for planetary exploration, part I
With Daniel Parrat, Institute of Microtechnology University of Neuchâtel

Introduction
Scheduled for launch in August 2007, the Phoenix Mars Mission [1] is designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Martian arctic's ice-rich soil. Onboard the Phoenix Lander, the MECA (Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer) instrument suite [2] assumes, among other tasks, the determination of the size, the distribution, and the shape of dust and soil grains. The involved components, shown in figure 1, are a sample delivery system, an optical microscope and an atomic force microscope (AFM).


Figure 1. Photograph of MECA’s microscopy station. From left to right, we distinguish the optical microscope (A), the FAMARS instrument (B), and the sample wheel (C). Click to enlarge.

The AFM, dubbed FAMARS (“First AFM on MARS”) [3], was conceived and characterized by IMT [4] and its partners, Nanosurf AG (Liestal, CH) and the University of Basel (CH). After its implementation in the MECA microscopy station, it was tested in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, USA) and the Imperial College (London, UK).

What is atomic force microscopy?
Atomic force microscopy is a modern method for characterizing surface topography at nanometer resolution. In contrast to optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy employs a local mechanical interaction with the measured sample; atomic-range forces acting between a very sharp sensor tip and the surface [5]. To acquire an image the sensor tip is raster scanned over the sample while measuring these forces. The tip is mounted on a flexible cantilever which bends under the forces exerted to the tip. Detecting this bending as function of tip location allows reconstructing the topography of the sample. The presence of a feedback loop is one of the differences between AFM and older stylus-based instruments such as record players and stylus profilometers. The AFM not only measures the force on the sample but also regulates it by constantly adjusting the vertical position of the probe, allowing acquisition of images at very low, constant forces.

Depending on the application, AFM may operate in different modes. In contact mode, the tip is usually maintained at a constant force, moving the cantilever up and down as it scans, as shown in Figure 2. In this case, the forces acting on the tip will cause it to snap onto the sample, which results in a nanometer-range flattening of the tip, and friction and stiction between the tip and the sample. This can be circumvented by operating the AFM in intermittent non-contact mode (or tapping mode). In this mode, the cantilever is vibrating at its free resonance frequency, and the tip-sample distance is controlled by measuring changes in either the vibration frequency or the vibration amplitude. Thus, the tip enters only temporarily into contact with the sample, reducing the lateral force during a scan. This is especially important for particles measurements, because using intermittent non-contact mode will drastically reduce the risk of loose particles tracked by the tip. This is the major motivation to use this mode for the FAMARS instrument.


Figure 2. AFM working principle described for contact mode with closed loop for constant force imaging. Click to enlarge.

Why was an AFM chosen to characterize Martian soil particles?
In order to characterize Martian soil particles in details, scientists need information from the millimeter scale to the nanometer scale - a scale never examined on Mars so far. The optical microscope of MECA, with its resolution of 4 microns per pixel, allows detection of particles ranging from about 10 micrometers up to the size of the field of view (1 millimeter by 2 millimeters). Large grains can be investigated by stitching several images together Thus, a tool with a resolution of few nanometers was also needed to give detailed information on the shape, the size and the surface texture of the grains.

AFM can easily reach this resolution. In addition, this technique offers several advantages compared to other terrestrial tools having similar resolution, e.g. the scanning electron microscope (SEM). First, AFM does not require a special medium (e.g. vacuum, conductive surface), contrary to SEM. Secondly, the miniaturization of the AFM is possible using microfabrication.

Description of the FAMARS instrument
As for any space mission, volume, weight and power consumption are key design parameters. Moreover, parts and materials must meet shock and vibration, radiation, thermal, and out- or degassing criteria. The Mars AFM consists of an electromagnetic scanner head (see figure 3), a micro-fabricated sensor chip, and a controller board. The total power consumption of the microscope is less than 8.5 W.

Scanner
The x-y-z scanner measures only 12mm x 18mm x 35mm and weights 15g. By using electromagnetic actuation with voice coils instead of the piezoelectric actuation commonly used in laboratory instruments, the scanner can be operated with low voltages, avoiding electrical arcing.


Figure 3. FAMARS scanner with a chip mounted on it. Click to enlarge.

The electromagnetic forces have to be counter-balance by mechanical forces in order to generate a smooth, controlled motion of the scanner. An innovative system of leaf-springs made of polyimide, shown in figure 4, allowed a good damping of this scan motion, showing moderate temperature dependence over a large range. Moreover, copper leads for connecting the AFM sensor to the controller board could be seamlessly integrated into the springs.

Figure 4. Left) View of the polyimide leaf prior to mounting to the scanner-head. Right) Larger view of a leaf-spring with integrated copper leads. The copper lines on the visible side were designed for compensating the bimorph effect. The electrical connections are established by the lines on the hidden side. Click to enlarge.

The second part of "The FAMARS instrument, an AFM for planetary exploration" will be available Thursday, 12th of July, here at spacEurope.


[1] http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php
[2] http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/science_meca.php
[3] http://www.mars-afm.ch/
[4] Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Jaquet-Droz 1, 2007 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
[5] G. Binnig, C. F. Quate, Ch. Gerber, “Atomic Force Microscope”, Physical Review Letters, 56, 930, (1986).

Reborn out of fire – follow the water

Mars is our neighbour in the outer solar system – however, as it happens to be with neighbours they are always a challenge and so is Mars – the Red Planet. The list of failed Mars missions is long. Despite this, another mission is put on the launch pad in Florida for lift-off in a few weeks from now.
The name of the programme, Phoenix, is taken from the ancient mythological bird which was reborn from its own ashes to rise up again nicer, faster, stronger, reaching for the sky.
And indeed – the scheduled Phoenix mission is a re-flight of many experiments from previous missions which failed. One could call this recycling but this wouldn’t sound as nice.
Phoenix will reuse components from two unsuccessful Mars missions, the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Surveyor Lander.
Mars Polar Lander slammed into the Mars at 75 km/h after a software glitch signalled the engine to shut off prematurely. Tragic, indeed!

Mars Surveyor Lander was cancelled before launch in 2001. Also sad, but the builder of Mars Surveyor Lander, Lockheed Martin was smart enough to keep the probe in storage since 2001. Good business for Lockheed and one should reckon that the company checked the software this time carefully to avoid mistakes like with Mars Climate Orbiter which likely burned up in Mars’ atmosphere because of a navigational error resulting from a mix-up between NASA and its contractor Lockheed Martin in converting metric and English measurements. Ironically, the Climate Orbiter re-flew an instrument from the Mars Observer spacecraft lost in 1993 …

However, Phoenix is now intended to put things right again. All the hopes of the Mars community are on the little spacecraft which does look a bit like a bird, when after arrival on Martian ground the solar arrays-wings are unfolded and the stereo camera-head mounted on a kind of rack tower will be erected in a upright position away from the main body. A robotic arm will drill into the North pole’s ice-rich soil. Here, in the ice-covered region, the instruments are supposed to deliver data on microbial life on the planet and the water content in the underground to a depth of up to half a meter. No Mars Lander could do this so far! The strategy in the US-American scientific Mars exploration clearly is to follow the water. By combining the results from previous missions, which investigated the South Pole in detail, NASA will gain an almost complete set of the information about how the poles determine the weather conditions on Mars.

Among the few international contributions, three are from Europe. The German Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research contributed much to the Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) as well as the Robotic Arm Camera (RAC) while the Swiss University of Neuchâtel provides the Atomic Force Microscope belonging to the microscopy station of MECA.
The Phoenix mission will carry Canada’s first Mars experiment – a meteorological station.

Phoenix is another mission to Mars – many expectations and hopes are flying with the spacecraft to a new world outside Earth. Even a piece of culture will be on board – in form of a DVD prepared by the Planetary Society containing Mars novels, messages from Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke and 250.000 names posted to an online announcement.

The Phoenix DVD installed on the deck of the lander. Click to enlarge. More information here. Credit: NASA / JPL / Lockheed Martin

Phoenix is another important step in the concerted, not yet globally coordinated, approach in Mars research. Phoenix will be followed by the European ExoMars mission whose drill is designed for getting samples from 2 m under the surface. ExoMars again will hopefully be followed by the international Mars Sample Return mission – something many scientists have dreamt of for a long time.

Phoenix is another step forward to a human exploration of Mars. There is not much left to say – only: Get the scale right this time! May the weather be favourable on arrival!

Provided the mission is successful, Phoenix will become reborn several times in the future – whenever the data is processed, it will contribute significantly to our understanding of Mars – our neighbour in space!

Jacqueline Myrrhe for the German space magazine

As I publish these words, only a month separate us from the launch of Phoenix and the beggining of a 10 months’ journey towards the Red Planet. This mission will deepen our knowledge about the history of water on Mars as well as our understanding of the biopotential and habitability of Martian soil.

To go for the gold, in this case, the water, Phoenix will dig down below the surface in order to uncover ice on its landing site and then proceed to a series of observations using state-of-the-art technology that will provide us answers with unprecedented detail and accuracy, marking a new ground on the exploration of another planet and, who knows, preparing the path for the future human exploration of Mars.

Phoenix rose from the ashes of Mars Polar Lander that crashed in December 1999 on the surface of Mars and from Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander (that was built, but never launched due to cancellation of the project in May 2000). The SSI (Surface Stereoscopic Imager), the RAC (Robotic Arm Camera) and the TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer), instruments from the previous polar lander, were incorporated in the following mission.
Despite some modifications in order to enhance robustness and science return, the Phoenix Lander is similar to the one planned for 2001.

The mission, lead by Peter Smith from the University of Arizona, is also an hymn to international cooperation: Although we might look at the lander as a whole, it is composed by several different components, each of them designed and built by many different people and institutions.
The Phoenix is the result of the dedicated work of many individuals, from many different places and with specific skills.
Some of the technology was developed by European partners as a consequence of previously demonstrated trustfulness know-how.

SpacEurope will, during the following days and untill the launch, give a special attention to the Phoenix and to the European institutions, people that have been contributing to this mission and the general public with a word to say.

To start this special series it was with great pleasure that spacEurope had the collaboration of Dr. Walter Goetz, from the Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS).

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Past achievements granted the prestige of the MPS that permitted it to be involved in a wide number of exciting, innovative, space exploration projects.
One of them is, of course, the Phoenix mission and this blog’s author wanted to know what were the specific precedents and reasons that allowed the MPS to participate in this mission.

The RAC team at the MPS (formerly MPAE) during development and integration of the instrument (1997-2000). Click to enlarge.

The excellent know-how of the MPS for low-noise CCD read out systems was first demonstrated by the HMC camera (Halley Multi-Color Camera), which was designed to provide high-resolution images of the nucleus and the coma of Halley's comet in nine colors and two polarizations, later on the CCD readouts, for DISR/Huygens and Mars Pathfinder (Please consult fig. 1 and 2 for detailed information).

The recognition of MPS’s CCD technology was demonstrated by its use in the Optical Microscope that was added to MECA onboard Phoenix.
The same CCD and readout was also supposed to be used for the SSI. However, late in the process, it was decided to equip SSI with optics and CCDs like the ones used by MER (Mars Exploration Rover) rather than CCDs from MPS, due to the higher resolution that would be provided by the MER-like units (1024*1024 versus 256*256 per eye).

The Robotic Arm Camera made its first appearance on the Mars Polar Lander (1999), later modified for the Mars Surveyor 2001.

So, after all this work, what are we going to do?
Let us imagine...everything went well during the Phoenix journey and its entry, descent and landing...
The lander wakes up and is ready for a working day on Mars, what will be the role of the MPS components in the mission context?

The RAC (fig. 3) was designed and integrated by MPS in collaboration with Lunar Planetary Laboratory (LPL), Tucson, is a light-weight camera with adjustable focus. The distance to the object in focus can be varied from 11 mm up to infinity. Therefore the RAC can be used for both high-resolution imaging of soil/trench walls (it will be able to retrieve colour images with a resolution of better than 50 µm...) and for atmospheric studies as well as for acquisition of fast, low-data-volume (low-resolution) panoramas.

One important aspect of the RAC is the fact of having its own illumination system that consists in 52 blue LEDs, 26 green LEDs and 26 red LEDs. This will permit important spectral information of nearby objects.

It has also range-finding ability in the near-field due to the adjustable focus, and in the far-field by its ability to acquire images at two different arm positions.

Several instruments onboard the Phoenix spacecraft, as, for example, those of MECA and TEGA, can only deal with a few samples over the entire mission. This fact demonstrates the need to carefully select the samples that shall be analyzed by these instruments. Here both SSI, built by the University of Arizona, and Max Planck Institute’s Robotic Arm Camera will lead the way...

As the Robotic Arm digs into the soil and picks up samples for further analysis, the camera, attached to the Robotic Arm (RA) just above the scoop, will provide images with a resolution of 23 microns per pixel.

Summarizing, the RAC will have two key tasks during the mission:
1) Characterize potential (!) samples to be further analyzed by the Phoenix science payload. The RAC will share this task with SSI in the case, where a given soil unit can be imaged by both cameras.
2) Characterize samples that have already been (!) accumulated in the Robotic Arm’s scoop.


So, now, while the Phoenix goes through its last preparations at the Kennedy Space Center, people in charge get assured that everything will work out just fine for the August great moment, when a Delta II 7925, manufactured by United Launch Alliance, roaring and leaving a fiery trail behind it will announce us that the Phoenix spacecraft, on the quest for the Martian Arctic secrets, is on its way.