MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates reports that its engineers are preparing to support a Space mission which will look for evidence of water on Mars. As NASA's Phoenix spacecraft makes its final approach for a May 25th landing on Mars, engineers from MDA will support critical weather and robotics systems on-board the spacecraft from the mission operations center at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Canada's contribution to the US-led Phoenix mission is the meteorological weather station, which will play an important role in helping scientists to understand the Martian climate. The Canadian Space Agency contracted MDA in partnership with Optech to build the weather station.
The weather station includes a light detection and ranging (lidar) instrument, three temperature sensors mounted on a 1.2 metre mast provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a pressure sensor. York University leads the Canadian science team.
Immediately after landing, the weather station will be deployed to begin sampling the Martian atmosphere and tracking daily weather and seasonal changes.
Throughout the three-month mission, these specialized instruments will measure temperatures at three heights near the surface, monitor the pressure and measure the quantities of dust and water vapour in the sky above the lander.
Steve Oldham, a vice president in MDA's Information Systems Group said 'We are proud that MDA is helping Canada be a part of a major international exploration mission. Advanced scientific instruments and robotics are trailblazers for human exploration missions for Canada's astronauts.'
Phoenix is the first science driven mission under NASA's Mars Scout program. The Phoenix lander is designed to examine the arctic site for potential habitability, to examine the history of water at the site, and to be the first to characterize the arctic climate.
Alliance Spacesystems, MDA's U.S. operation, also developed the robotic arm on Phoenix that will be used to trench the ice-rich soil on the Martian surface. The Phoenix arm extends Alliance's successful heritage of building robotics systems for exploration, exemplified by the Mars Exploration Rover robotic arms.
