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Eye on Mars

11 June 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander with its onboard instruments. Image courtesy of NASA.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander with its onboard instruments. Image courtesy of NASA.

Monash's School of Physics is keeping a close eye on the Phoenix Mars mission.

The mission, launched by NASA on 26 May, will be the first to return data from the polar regions of Mars. It is the first mission to be led by a public university, the University of Arizona.

Mars is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface but in the Martian arctic, water ice lurks just below ground level. The main objective for this mission is to find how water existed in the past Martian environment, and search for evidence of habitable zones in the ice-soil regions of the planet.

 It will be instrumental in achieving the science goals of NASA's long-term Mars Exploration Program of landing humans on Mars.

The School of Physics made the live webcast of the landing available to staff and students at the Clayton campus.

The school's John Golja said it was great to be able to showcase the ingenuity of exploring and discovering new worlds to an audience in real time.

"The audience was captivated by the sheer brilliance in problem solving that went into designing and executing the mission," Mr Golja said.

"We all wanted to know when the first images will come. What will we see? What will those Martians think of our weird contraption!"

Mr Golja said the data and images collected over the next three months would be relayed to eagerly awaiting scientists, engineers and the public.

"The internet will provide a near real time access to the processed images and data, but the scientific analysis published in journals will take many months to complete," Mr Golja said.

"It's great for those students in physics, chemistry and mathematics to be able to follow the progress of the mission in this way and see the practical side of the theories they have been taught in the classroom, particularly since the mission has been designed and developed by a fellow university."

For up to date information on the Phoenix Mission go to Phonix Mars Mission website.