It’s almost sad that the next mission to Mars brought to you by Lockheed Martin will be called ‘Phoenix’. You’ll recall with regret, that for some reason the engineers on the Mars Climate Orbiter project in 1999 weren’t aware that NASA used the metric system and lost that $125 million dollar spacecraft months before the ill-fated Polar Lander was set to rendevous with it. The Polar Lander was subsequently lost as well. Read on for links to the new project…

Lockheed was redeemed in spades by helping make the more recent Mars Rover missions of Spirit and Opportunity a success, but there’s something bitter sweet about a project that has to ‘rise from the ashes’.

The Egyptian myth of the Phoenix is that of a bird that ‘at the end of its life-cycle … builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix arises.” (from Wikipedia)

The Phoenix mission has gotten the go-ahead to blast off for Mars in 2007 to dig for subsurface water ice in the northern polar regions and evaluate how habitable that region might be for future human visitors. Information from Space.com on the mission is here. More info from the University of Arizona here

I am personally very excited about another mission to Mars, and I have my fingers crossed that it’ll be another grand success, but ‘Phoenix’? They really need a better PR team.