[meteorite-list] Phoenix Heads for Polar Region on Mars

[Ron Baalke]

08.04.07

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-5011
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

George Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
george.h.diller at nasa.gov

Sara Hammond
University of Arizona, Tucson
520-626-1974
shammond at lpl.arizona.edu

RELEASE: 45-07

NASA SPACECRAFT HEADS FOR POLAR REGION ON MARS

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission blasted off 
Saturday, aiming for a May 25, 2008, arrival at the Red Planet and a 
close-up examination of the surface of the northern polar region.

Perched atop a Delta II rocket, the spacecraft left Cape Canaveral Air 
Force Base at 5:26 a.m. EDT into the predawn sky above Florida's 
Atlantic coast.

"Today's launch is the first step in the long journey to the surface 
of Mars. We certainly are excited about launching, but we still are 
concerned about our actual landing, the most difficult step of this 
mission," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the 
University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson.

The spacecraft established communications with its ground team via the 
Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network at 
7:02 a.m. EDT, after separating from the third stage of the launch 
vehicle.

"The launch team did a spectacular job getting us on the way." said 
Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Our trajectory is still being evaluated 
in detail; however we are well within expected limits for a 
successful journey to the red planet. We are all thrilled!"

Phoenix will be the first mission to touch water-ice on Mars. Its 
robotic arm will dig to an icy layer believed to lie just beneath the 
surface. The mission will study the history of the water in the ice, 
monitor weather of the polar region, and investigate whether the 
subsurface environment in the far-northern plains of Mars has ever 
been favorable for sustaining microbial life.

"Water is central to every type of study we will conduct on Mars," 
Smith said.

The Phoenix Mars Mission is the first of NASA's competitively proposed 
and selected Mars Scout missions, supplementing the agency's core 
Mars Exploration Program, whose theme is "follow the water." The 
University of Arizona was selected to lead the mission in August 2003 
and is the first public university to lead a Mars exploration 
mission.

Phoenix uses the main body of a lander originally made for a 2001 
mission that was cancelled before launch. "During the past year we 
have run Phoenix through a rigorous testing regimen," said Ed Sedivy, 
Phoenix spacecraft program manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, 
Denver, which built the spacecraft. "The testing approach runs the 
spacecraft and integrated instruments through actual mission 
sequences, allowing us to asses the entire system through the life of 
the mission while here on Earth."

Samples of soil and ice collected by the lander's robotic arm will be 
analyzed by instruments mounted on the deck. One key instrument will 
check for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil 
samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are given off. 
Another will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the 
dissolution products. Cameras and microscopes will provide 
information on scales spanning 10 powers of 10, from features that 
could fit by the hundreds into a period at the end of a sentence to 
an aerial view taken during descent. A weather station will provide 
information about atmospheric processes in the arctic region.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at JPL 
and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. The NASA 
Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center and the United Launch 
Alliance are responsible for the Delta II launch service. 
International contributions are provided by the Canadian Space 
Agency, the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), the University of 
Copenhagen (Denmark), the Max Planck Institute (Germany) and the 
Finnish Meteorological Institute. JPL is a division of the California 
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Additional information on Phoenix is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

Additional information on NASA's Mars program is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

	
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