A mission to the North Pole of Mars to explore the high latitudes will launch in 2007
Avi Blizovsky
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A mission to the north pole of Mars to explore the high latitudes will launch in 2007, NASA said Monday.
The spacecraft, unmanned of course, will be called Phoenix. It is scheduled to land in March 2008 and will examine underground samples to see if they contain organic molecules.
If all goes as planned, Phoenix will be the first in the Mars Scout series, a $325 million program to explore the Red Planet.
In the meantime, two American spacecraft, 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity', are making their way to Mars, which will investigate whether the planet ever had water in sufficient quantity to support life. They are scheduled to land at two opposite sites in January 2004.
Japanese and European Mars orbiters, and one European lander (now inside the mother spacecraft) are on their way to Mars and will arrive in late December or early January. Two other American spacecraft - Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey are still orbiting Mars and sending images from there.
In 2001, the Mars Fuller Lander, which was supposed to land at the South Pole, crashed on Mars.
Mars - hints of the existence of water
Dr. Noah Brosh
In the last 30 years, hints have accumulated, coming from data from many spacecraft, for the existence of water on Mars. Although these are probably not permanent bodies of water, but only those that appear when the ice melts and leave marks on the surface of the ground in 10 million
the last years.
The current temperature on the planet's surface is relatively low, and the atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth's. Despite this, photographs of the surface of Mars show plenty of clues to the existence of flowing water and soil erosion. There are even large valleys, formed in the distant past on Mars, that show signs of new flow, albeit weaker than before.
Besides streams, it is also possible to notice frozen lakes and ice deposits at the poles, and probably also under the surface of the ground.
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Ydan Mars
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