The next U.S. spacecraft to Mars will take along Canadian-built instruments that will provide the first daily weather measurements from the surface of another planet.
The spacecraft, named Phoenix, is supposed to touch down in the northern polar region of the Red Planet early next year.
"We will be able to measure temperature, pressure, wind and the composition of the clouds on Mars," said Stéphane Desjardins, acting director for exploration projects at the Canadian Space Agency, which is footing the $37-million bill for the extraterrestrial weather station.
The lander should provide invaluable information for scientists planning human missions to Mars, where the temperature can swing from a balmy few degrees above zero to a heart-stopping -100.
Mr. Desjardins said the mission, the CSA's first significant contribution to Mars exploration, is a perfect fit for Canada's scientific community. After all, he said, Canadians know an awful lot about polar environments and cold weather.
This week, the Phoenix lander, along with its Canadian components, will be delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final preparations before launch. It is set to blast off in early August and will take 10 months to reach the fourth planet from the sun. If everything goes according to plan, it will make a soft landing in late May of 2008.
In addition to its weather station, Phoenix comes equipped with a two-metre-long robotic arm that can dig into the Martian arctic soil, which is believed to resemble the permafrost found in Canada's far north.
Observations from orbiting probes suggest that vast stores of frozen water lie just below the surface in the frigid polar region. If that's the case, Phoenix could be the first spacecraft to physically analyze Martian water, a key ingredient of life and a necessary requirement for human colonization.
"We are hoping we are going to find a mixture of dirt and frozen water," said Karen McBride, who is managing the mission for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, D.C.
"We don't want solid ice because it would be very hard to handle," she said, noting that Arctic ice can be as hard as concrete.
Mini-labs aboard the lander will analyze samples scooped up by the robotic arm, which might be able to dig a trench up to a half-metre deep. Earlier Martian probes barely scratched the surface. Tests will check for organic chemicals and other signs that could reveal whether the site is capable of supporting life.
It's hoped the lander will continue operating for 150 days, or roughly the summer and fall months in northern latitudes. As winter approaches and the sun goes lower in the sky, the solar panels won't be able to generate sufficient power to keep the craft working.
Phoenix is the first in a series of relatively low-cost "scout" missions that are preparing the way for future human landings.
The main body of the spacecraft was cobbled together from the spare or unused parts of two previous ill-fated missions: the Mars Polar Lander, which crashed on the planet in 1999, and the Mars Surveyor, which was mothballed in 2001 after a spate of Mars mission failures.
Like its mythological namesake, Phoenix is literally rising from the ashes of its predecessors, Ms. McBride noted.
Along with cutting costs, using spare parts saved time for the U.S. scientists and technicians assembling the born-again probe. The compressed schedule, however, was a huge disadvantage for the Canadian scientists offering to create new weather instruments for the U.S. spacecraft.
"We had to design and build a lot of it from scratch," said Jim Whiteway, the lead Canadian scientist and an associate professor at York University in Toronto.
He said there were times when the Canadians weren't sure they would meet the deadline.
