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POPS Phoenix Ready For Mars Landing Sunday
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter camera run showed the weather will be good on Sunday, with no significant dust storms around the landing site, said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith. U.S. scientists will be joined by their counterparts from Canada and Europe in running the mission robotically from a headquarters in Tucson, Ariz. Canada's contribution is a Meteorological Station, or Met, designed to monitor changes in water abundance, dust, temperature and other variables in the Martian atmosphere. Of 11 previous attempts to land spacecraft on Mars, only five have succeeded. The Canadian Space Agency and a team headed by York University — and including contributions from the University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, the Geological Survey of Canada and instrument-maker Optech and — will oversee the science operations of the station, which was built by Canadarm maker MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., also known as MDA, of Richmond, B.C.