Missions Delayed and Planned

Weather conditions on Earth and Mars are plaguing two Jet Propulsion Laboratory missions. The Phoenix Mars Lander, which had a scheduled launch Friday, has now been postponed to Saturday at 3:02 a.m. PST. The delay is due to severe weather at the Kennedy Space Center, while the rovers Opportunity and Spirit are still battling a severe dust storm on the Martian surface.

JPL/NASA announced that Friday's launch of the Phoenix Mars Lander has been postponed 24 hours to 3:02 a.m. PST, Saturday. Severe weather conditions surrounded the Kennedy Space Center launch pad on Tuesday afternoon delaying the second stage fueling.

As of Thursday evening, NASA meteorologists estimated a 20 percent chance that the weather would delay the Saturday launch. The next launch window would be at 3:02 a.m. PST Sunday. If Phoenix misses either of these launch windows, the next opportunity will have to be evaluated by NASA administrators.

The Phoenix is planned to arrive on Mars in the spring of 2008. The spacecraft is unusual in a few ways: it has used some hardware from a canceled 2001 Mars Lander mission and it will use a type of soft landing that has not been done since the Viking landing a decade ago.

Instead of landing using air bags, as the rovers did, the Phoenix will have retro-rockets that decelerate as the spacecraft touches down onto the northern hemisphere of the planet. The Lander will use its robotic arm to dig into the ground and analyze the soil. The launch delay will not affect the spring arrival.

A more serious problem is the Martian sandstorms that are affecting the rovers on the planet's surface. Dust in the atmosphere is now settling on Opportunity's solar panels and is affecting the rover's ability to convert sunlight into electricity.

The storms have been active since early in July when the Opportunity had planned on entering Victoria crater to explore the Martian past. Since July 18, the rover has been using a very low power regimen. This week, scientists and engineers expressed more concern about the continuing dust storms. While Opportunity is battling the storm at Victoria, Spirit is facing the same problems at Gusev Crater.

As the weather battle on Mars continued, a press conference was held Wednesday to highlight some new missions and a new way of looking at some old missions.