Canada to make its mark on Mars

[Canadian4206]

Published: Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Canada's first mission to Mars is less than three weeks from its destination, with a package of instruments that will tell scientists about clouds, dust and weather on the Red Planet.

It's not an all-Canadian mission, but Canada built about one-fifth of the scientific instruments packed aboard Mars Phoenix, NASA's first probe to Mars in two years.

"This is what gives us credibility" with other space nations, says Richard Herd, a meteorite scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, and a frequent federal adviser on space exploration. "It's Canada's visibility in space. It's what our future in space will be built on: The accomplishments we have now."

Canada has never been part of a successful Mars mission, though we sent one instrument on a Japanese probe that was damaged in space and missed its rendezvous with the planet.

This time, the Canadian team, led by York University, estimates a 95-per-cent chance of landing softly on May 25.

Already, Canadian space scientists are gravitating to Tucson. The University of Arizona is headquarters for the scientific work on data from the mission.

Canada has built two parts of Mars Phoenix, says Peter Taylor, a space scientist at York University.:

- One is called lidar? a radar-like device that shoots pencil-thin laser beams at the atmosphere to study the thin clouds and thicker dust. The shoebox-sized device will scan for dust devils -- swirling squalls of dust. Fine red-brown dust is everywhere on Mars, and it can gum up machinery.

- The other is a mini-weather station. It won't forecast much, but it should give accurate readings of temperature, wind and air pressure day by day in the Martian Arctic.

Both instruments have an official 92-day mission, with hopes of lasting twice that long before winter kills them.

The American parts of Mars Phoenix, meanwhile, will be drilling for the ice that's suspected of being just under the surface, but hasn't been identified for certain. It will also have a mass spectrometer -- an instrument that will scan samples from this digging, and analyse what's in them.

NASA is particularly eager to find organic molecules that would hint at past life on Mars.

"Or even present life," Mr. Taylor says. It's not seen as the biggest possibility, but some Mars experts still say it's there.

"NASA is sort of downplaying the search-for-life aspect, but it crops up all the time."

The mission, he adds, "gives Canada a significant profile internationally."

The main point in going lies in simply trying to understand another planet, said York's Jim Whiteway, the lead investigator in Canada's group. "That's first and foremost, but obviously there is an application, because there are plans for humans to explore Mars. And the first thing you need to know is the environment they'll be working in," he said.

He has spent a career studying Earth's atmosphere. Now, he says, new opportunities are opening up for Canadian scientists.

"Previously if you wanted to do planetary science, the first thing you'd think about was the move down to California."

With six research scientists, their staffs and students all working on this project, he says, "it's the beginning of a Canadian community" doing direct planetary exploration from Canada, during actual missions.

"And as this one is going on, we're planning our next project and designing new instruments."

Other York scientists on the project include Allan Carswell (whose company, Optech, developed the prototype for the lidar) and Cameron Dickinson.

The entire mission will cost $386 million.

Website:
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/exploration/phoenix.asp