I hope that this project isn’t plauged by the “faster, better, cheaper – choose two” thinking that the some space probes have had in the few years.
I think that the science that can be gathered from the polar regions of Mars will answer a lot of questions that scientists have about where the water might have gone.
The Phoenix Mars Mission, scheduled for launch in August 2007, is the first in NASA’s “Scout Program.” Scouts are designed to be highly innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions being planned as part of the agency’s Mars Exploration Program. Phoenix is specifically designed to measure volatiles (especially water) and complex organic molecules in the arctic plains of Mars, where the Mars Odyssey orbiter has discovered evidence of ice-rich soil very near the surface.
Similar to its namesake, Phoenix “raises from the ashes” a spacecraft and instruments from two previous unsuccessful attempts to explore Mars. The 2001 lander, administratively mothballed in 2000, is being resurrected for the Phoenix Mission. Similarly, many of the mission’s scientific instruments have already been built, requiring little or no modification for flight to Mars.
Phoenix is a fixed lander, using a robotic arm to dig to the ice layer and analyze samples with a suite of sophisticated on-deck scientific instruments.