Public Invited to UA's Phoenix Mars Mission Open House May 5

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Public Invited to UA's Phoenix Mars Mission Open House May 5 - 'Cinco
de
Mars'

University of Arizona
April 12, 2007

N O T A E

WHAT:
Phoenix Mars Mission Open House
"Cinco de Mars"

WHEN:
10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday, May 5

WHERE:
Phoenix Mission Science Operations Center
North Sixth Ave./East Drachman St., Tucson

PARKING:
UA Second Street Garage
Free shuttle from UA Student Union circle

ADMISSION:
Free

Contact Information
Sara Hammond
(520) 626-1974
shammond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Related Web site
Phoenix Mars Mission <http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu>

The University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory will open its
Phoenix Mars Mission science operations center (SOC) to the public
from
10 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 5, for a "Cinco de Mars"
celebration.

The Phoenix Mission SOC is the base of science operations for NASA's
upcoming mission to the red planet. The Phoenix Mars Lander will be
launched in early August from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in
Florida for a May 2008 touchdown.

This public open house will be the last before the mission is
launched.
proposed in 1991 than an ocean repeatedly formed over the northern
plains of Mars. Since, Baker has developed a model for how this could
happen.

- Noon, William Boynton, principal investigator for the Gamma Ray
Spectrometer (GRS), an instrument on the 2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter.
Boynton's team made world headlines in May 2002, when the GRS found
enormous quantities of subsurface water ice on Mars. The idea for the
Phoenix Mission was born from this discovery. Boynton leads the
Phoenix
Mission Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) experiment. TEGA is a
combination high-temperature furnace and mass spectrometer instrument
that scientists will use to analyze martian ice and soil samples.

- 1 p.m., Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High
Resolution
Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The
HiRISE camera, which began its science mission last November, is the
most powerful telescopic camera ever sent to another planet. HiRISE
has
so far taken more than 150 images of candidate Phoenix Mission landing
sites. And it has found evidence that liquid or gas flowed through
cracks in underground rock on ancient Mars.

- 2 p.m., Peter Smith, Phoenix's principal investigator. Smith
describes
the Phoenix Mission as "a stepping stone on a path of missions that
search for habitable zones on Mars and then probe for life
signatures."

- 3 p.m., Alfred Quiroz, UA professor of art. Quiroz and his students
designed a giant mural for the Phoenix Mission, then painted it over a
20 x 60 foot area on the exterior south wall of SOC last fall. The
mural
is the largest in Tucson.

The must-see highlight of the open house is the full-scale mock
Phoenix
Mars Lander, complete with working engineering models of the science
instruments, in the science center's Payload Interoperability Testbed,
or the "PIT." Scientists already have begun using the model lander to
practice how they'll command their science instruments during the
mission. They'll continue to use the mock lander and the engineering
instruments once the Phoenix Mars Lander is operating on the surface
of
Mars. What happens on the surface of Mars during the actual mission
will
happen first at the SOC in Tucson.

Visitors will also see scale models of NASA spacecraft currently
orbiting Mars, stunning images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's
HiRISE camera, meteorites from the UA Southwest Meteorite Center, and
an
exhibit about the Phoenix Mission prepared by the Pima Air and Space
Museum. There will be guided tours of the Science Operations Center,
hands-on activities for children and prizes.

The Phoenix Mars Mission, the first in NASA's "Scout" Mars exploration
program, will be the first lander to dig beneath the Martian polar
surface in search of water ice, clues to climate change and habitat
that
might support life.

Phoenix's payload includes a nearly 8-foot-long robotic arm for
digging
through soil into ice, a robotic arm camera, a surface stereo camera,
a
descent camera, a meteorological station, a high-temperature oven and
mass spectrometer, a powerful atomic force microscope and a miniature
wet chemistry laboratory.

Free parking for the open house is available at the UA's Second Street
Garage, 1340 E. Second St. (near the UA Student Union.) Free shuttle
service will be provided between the UA Student Union Circle and the
Phoenix operations center. Limited handicapped parking is available at
the operations center at North Sixth Avenue and East Drachman Street.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith,with project management at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership with Lockheed
Martin Space Systems. International contributions for Phoenix are
provided by the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel
(Switzerland), the University of Copenhagen, and the Max Planck
Institute in Germany. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.

After the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., flies
the
spacecraft to Mars and verifies that the landed spacecraft is healthy,
NASA will turn mission control over to UA in Tucson. UA is the first
public university to lead a mission to Mars. Lunar and Planetary
Laboratory (LPL) senior scientist Peter H. Smith is the principal
investigator.

Highlights of the May 5 open house will include a series of
presentations by UA scientists outlining UA's major role in Mars
exploration:

- 11 a.m., Victor Baker, Regents Professor of hydrology and water
resources, planetary sciences and geosciences. Baker and colleagues

.

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