Martian Summer – Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission by Andrew Kessler; Pegasus Books; New York, New York; $27.95 (Hardcover); April 2011.
NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander was a milestone in red planet probing. Touching down on Mars on May 25, 2008, the spacecraft was the first human-made craft ever sent to the Martian arctic.
Andrew Kessler has served up a quirky, humorous, but vivid inside look at both the spacecraft and individuals that dug in deep to explore enigmatic Mars. Leading the list of the author’s favorite Martians is Peter Smith, Phoenix Principal Investigator of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Martian Summer is a fun read and loaded with witty, off-beat observations about the Mars mission. In an acknowledgments page of the book, Kessler writes: “It’s heartbreaking not to list every member of the Phoenix Team in these pages. They are awesome and I suggest you find them and bring them a glass of champagne to celebrate their commitment to awesomeness.”
Phoenix operated successfully in the Martian arctic for about two months longer than its planned three-month mission. Operations ended when waning sunlight left the solar-powered craft with insufficient energy to keep working.
“Now Phoenix is Martian installation art,” notes the author. “A little beachhead planted by humans on a faraway world that says ‘Peter Smith and the Phoenix team were here.’”
Phoenix’s preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes.
Additional findings by Phoenix include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.
Kessler gives the reader a distinctive, up-close and personal view of the NASA Phoenix lander project – an enjoyable, page turning tale that’s entertaining while being informative.
For more information, go to:
http://pegasusbooks.us/pdf/SpringSummer2011_Cat.pdf
By Leonard David