|
|
On the Space Frontier |
 Tucson moved to the center of the spotlight for space exploration and research when the Phoenix Mars Mission was launched in 2008. The University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory partnered with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, and the Canadian Space Agency to excavate, sample and analyze Martian soil for five months. The Mars lander also sent back more than 25,000 photos and enough data to keep mission analysis teams busy for years.
This was the first Mars mission ever led by a public university and the project used some of the world’s most sophisticated and advanced technology to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Mars soil. Among the mission’s many prominent achievements, it verified the presence of water-based ice in the  Martian subsurface.
This Mars Mission was designed to be an innovative, low-cost part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, which aims to incrementally lay the scientific groundwork for human exploration of the Red Planet.Tucson is home to the University of Arizona, one of the country’s top research universities, and offers a skilled workforce. This combination ensures that Southern Arizona have the capability and opportunity to truly go “where no one has gone before.”
In May of 2011, the University of Arizona once again gained national attention when NASA chose the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to lead the OSIRIS-REx mission. This mission, slated to launch in 2016, will be the first mission to sample an asteroid and return to Earth. The mission is budgeted for $800 million in funding, with all mission science operations run from the University of Arizona campus. Learn more here.
Learn more:
|
|
 |
|
|