The University of Arizona will open the new UA Mars Lounge, dedicated to its Phoenix Mars Mission, and unveil a large landing clock on Sunday at 1 p.m. in the Student Union Memorial Center. The mission’s principal investigator, Peter Smith, will unveil the clock in the Student Union rotunda.
The lounge was designed to give students, faculty, staff and visitors a glimpse into what UA scientists have contributed to this first mission of NASA’s Scout Mission Program through a collection of images and multimedia presentations.
The space has been donated by the Arizona Student Unions and the UA’s Alumni Association for the next eight months as the Phoenix Mars Lander cruises and then lands on the Red Planet.
The College of Science Lunar and Planetary Laboratory’s Space Imagery Center provided most of the images that will be displayed in the lounge, including shots of the Martian surface from the UA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera and Gamma Ray Spectrometer, as well as launch photos of the liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in early August.
