spacetoday.net: NASA selects Phoenix for Mars Scout mission

Posted: Mon, Aug 4, 2003, 9:24 PM ET (0124 GMT)
Phoenix Mars lander illustration (Univ. of Arizona)

NASA has selected Phoenix, a Mars lander based in part on hardware developed for a previous cancelled lander as the agency's first low-cost Mars Scout mission. NASA said Monday it selected Phoenix from a field of four finalists as the first in a new series of relatively low-cost, competitively-selected missions called Mars Scout. The lander, scheduled for launch in 2007, will land in the high northern latitudes of Mars in early 2008. The spacecraft will be equipped with several instruments, including a robot arm designed to dig into the terrain, in an effort to look for deposits of water ice thought to exist just below the surface. The spacecraft itself is based on hardware built for the 2001 Mars Surveyor Lander, a mission that NASA cancelled in the wake of the Mars Polar Lander failure. The $325-million mission will be led by the University of Arizona, with participation from JPL, Lockheed Martin, and the Canadian Space Agency. Phoenix beat out three other missions, including SCIM, an atmospheric sample return mission; ARES, a Mars airplane; and MARVEL, an orbiter to search for volcanic and biogenic activity. The head of the ARES project, based at NASA Langley, told a local newspaper that NASA passed over their proposal because of "NASA's growing concern with reducing risk" in the post-Columbia era.