Lander is on Mars, so now what?

Now that the Phoenix has landed, what's next on Mars?Nothing less, over the coming months and years, than trying to answer a very big question: whether we are alone in the universe.Scientists say if they can prove some form of life began independently on Mars, they'll have an answer.But the steps to finding it are slow, careful and methodical.The Phoenix Mars Lander, on the Red Planet now, doesn't actually have any life-detection equipment.Ultimately what the $420 million Phoenix mission is expected to do is lay the groundwork for future Mars missions that will verify current or past life.Among those plans: a $2 billion NASA mission in 2009, and a longer-term possibility of returning Mars soil samples to Earth.Leaders of the unmanned spacecraft's mission have about 90 days to do their work before the harsh Mars winter puts Phoenix permanently to rest.The objective: verifying the presence of water on Mars, and figuring out whether the planet ever had -- or now has -- conditions that would support life.The solar-powered lander, which touched down May 25, is operable pretty much during Mars' summer only, when the sun never sets. Once winter arrives, the power dies.In other words, the mission goes "until Mars freezes over," as mission project manager Barry Goldstein likes to say.Unlike the 1930s depiction of Mars in H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," scientists say there's no chance of intelligent life on Mars. What's less clear is the kind of life that may have lived there in the past, and whether it's a place that could support future human exploration.Mission principal investigator Peter H. Smith said the Phoenix team fully expects to find ice, and sharp images returned from Mars over the weekend indicate it may already have, in a patch underneath the lander.The team will be studying the planet's hydrologic cycle."We have a hydrologic cycle on Earth -- we've oceans and rain and rivers and ice at the ice caps and glaciers and all that, and it's all mixed together into how water moves around the planet, shapes the planet and drives life. It's kind of a key thing," Smith said.Once this mission is over, the United States is not waiting long for a return to Mars.In 2009, NASA is slated to launch the Mars Science Lab, a rover that's scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet in 2010.The Mars Science Lab will build on the Phoenix mission's science through expanded chemical analysis on the surface of Mars, said Doug McCuistion, who directs the Mars Exploration Program for NASA.That mission is currently budgeted at roughly $1.78 billion, but there are overruns under evaluation that will likely increase the final cost to approximately $1.9 billion to $2.08 billion, he said."It will analyze rocks and soils that have interacted with water in the past to understand more about possible habitats and their ability to support life past or present," McCuistion wrote in an e-mail.A stereo imaging camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is looking at possible landing sites for the Mars Science Lab, said Alfred S. McEwen, a University of Arizona professor of planetary sciences and principal investigator on the imaging camera.The Mars Science Lab will be a very different mission, McEwen said. "It's a long-lived rover with a very sophisticated suite of instruments. It's a very big, expensive mission."Phoenix is more of a low-cost mission -- low-cost in NASA terms, that is," he said.An international working group called iMARS is trying to develop a joint mission for the early 2020s that would include returning a soil sample to Earth."While the NASA Mars Program budget cannot currently afford this mission, continued studies and partnerships could make the mission within our reach," McCuistion said.No one knows if or when humans will go to Mars.One joke making the rounds on the University of Arizona campus says if they find water, we'll be there in 20 years, if they find life, we'll go in 10, and if they find oil, we'll be there next year.(Arizona Daily Star reporter Aaron Mackey contributed to this report. Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at sinnes(at)azstarnet.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)