[meteorite-list] NASA Phoenix Mission Ready for Mars Landing

[Ron Baalke]

May 13, 2008

Dwayne Brown 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

Guy Webster 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov 

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

RELEASE: 08-122

NASA PHOENIX MISSION READY FOR MARS LANDING

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long 
journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls 
of Martian soil and buried ice. The lander is scheduled to touch down 
on the Red Planet May 25. 

Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 13,000 
mph. In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging 
sequence of events to slow to about 5 mph before its three legs reach 
the ground. Confirmation of the landing could come as early as 7:53 
p.m. EDT.

"This is not a trip to grandma's house. Putting a spacecraft safely on 
Mars is hard and risky," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for 
NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in 
Washington. "Internationally, fewer than half the attempts have 
succeeded." 

Rocks large enough to spoil the landing or prevent opening of the 
solar panels present the biggest known risk. However, images from the 
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's 
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailed enough to show individual rocks 
smaller than the lander, have helped lessen that risk. 

"We have blanketed nearly the entire landing area with HiRISE images," 
said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, chairman of 
the Phoenix landing-site working group. "This is one of the least 
rocky areas on all of Mars and we are confident that rocks will not 
detrimentally impact the ability of Phoenix to land safely."

Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that 
was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft 
during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix 
mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing 
a new science opportunity. 

Earlier in 2002, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered that plentiful 
water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of 
high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other 
proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of 
competitively selected missions. 

"Phoenix will land farther north on Mars than any previous mission," 
said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The solar-powered robotic lander will manipulate a 7.7-foot arm to 
scoop up samples of underground ice and soil lying above the ice. 
Onboard laboratory instruments will analyze the samples. Cameras and 
a Canadian-supplied weather station will supply other information 
about the site's environment. 

"The Phoenix mission not only studies the northern permafrost region, 
but takes the next step in Mars exploration by determining whether 
this region, which may encompass as much as 25 percent of the Martian 
surface, is habitable," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal 
investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

One research goal is to assess whether conditions at the site ever 
have been favorable for microbial life. The composition and texture 
of soil above the ice could give clues to whether the ice ever melts 
in response to long-term climate cycles. Another important question 
is whether the scooped-up samples contain carbon-based chemicals that 
are potential building blocks and food for life.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith with project management at JPL. 
The development partnership is with Lockheed Martin, Denver. 
International contributions are from the Canadian Space Agency; the 
University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen 
and Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the 
Finnish Meteorological Institute. 

For more about the Phoenix mission on the Web, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

	
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