Mission to Mars

- June 13, 2007


The instruments on the Phoenix Lander. Duration: 255:18, Format: Quicktime
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NASA?s Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft has been delivered to Cape Canaveral, where Phoenix will start a much, much longer trip in August. It will take Phoenix 10 months to reach the fourth planet from the sun.

But before the delivery, scientists had a chance to test the instruments aboard Phoenix at mission control in Tucson, Arizona.

The Canadian contribution to Phoenix is a weather station. It includes a pressure sensor, three temperature sensors located on a vertical mast and a lidar. As members of the International Phoenix Science Team, Dalhousie?s Tom Duck and Cameron Dickinson ? who have lent their expertise to the construction and operation of the lidar ? explain what the instruments do and what they may encounter on Mars.

For more information on the mission to Mars and the Dalhousie connection, please see the website: http://www.dal.ca/mars/

Editing: Findlay Muir; Videography: Cameron Dickinson.