Radio glitch delays plans for maneuvering Mars lander arm by Radka Konkolova

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was sent to the orbit of the Mars planet in august 2005. It took almost half a year till it reached Red Planet. But at first it was only rotating around the planet for approximately two years. Now this machine had settled on the landscape in order to look for and collect information and parts of the soil on the various places of the planet, what will allow another research of this not as well explored part of our galaxy. But now some problems with Phoenix have occurred. So the taking up the material had to be delayed for one day. It is because of glitch on the radio communication of this facility and the control center of NASA on the Earth. Interested people from this agency reported that Phoenix is adapted also to the such cases, but the problem was, that workers working on the Earth wanted to turn the turned off radio communication back on. Because this machine is composed in the way it is able to turn the radio off when something unexpected happens, but also restore this communication within some time. Even, Phoenix has got also the second radio aboard, so people in NASA and University of Arizona (who cooperate on this project) claim, they have got no problems with Phoenix, although that second radio should be probably reprogrammed. But when some accident happened, the communication would be secure by the Mars second orbiter named Mars Odyssey. But it seems, there is no serious problem with Phoenix, because as the researchers said, since landing, this machine has send many photos of the landscape in very high quality. Now its main task is to acquire some patterns of the soil and ice using the 8-feet long robotic arm to do it. It should be quite easy because it occurs on the very good position, which is on quite flat surface and the place is also good and probably also accessible for digging. After assembling the mass it will use its equipment to evaluate the patterns. Researchers want to inquire the soil and ice acquired by Phoenix to find out if there has been possible life on our very neighbourly planet. Because for them is unbelievable and inadmissible the claim that there hadn't had to be any...

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080527/ap_on_sc/phoenix_mars;_ylt=Av3JIDSX7I0FEp4i_A_jdNWs0NUE

by Radka Konkolova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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