[meteorite-list] NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site

[Ron Baalke]

May 25, 2008

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

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

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

RELEASE: JPL2008-081

NASA'S PHOENIX SPACECRAFT LANDS AT MARTIAN ARCTIC SITE

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern 
polar region of Mars Sunday to begin three months of examining a site 
chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the 
lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. 
Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its 
difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals 
took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light. 

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, 
Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of 
Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly 
awaited further information from Phoenix later Sunday night.

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael 
Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without 
airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

"For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a 
JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars," Griffin said. "I 
couldn't be happier to be here to witness this incredible 
achievement."

During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching 
on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels 
during the spacecraft's cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned 
seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, 
entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries provide electricity until 
the lander's own pair of solar arrays spread open.

"We've passed the hardest part and we're breathing again, but we still 
need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun 
generating power," said JPL's Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project 
manager. If all goes well, engineers will learn the status of the 
solar arrays between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time (10 and 10:30 p.m. 
Eastern Time) from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA's Mars 
Odyssey orbiter.

The team will also be watching for the Sunday night transmission to 
confirm that masts for the stereo camera and the weather station have 
swung to their vertical positions. 

"What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the 
next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft," said 
Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for 
the Phoenix mission. "I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first 
landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our 
mission."

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long 
robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two 
days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples 
of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck. 

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed 
via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., 
antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network.

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, Mars Odyssey 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.

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

visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

	
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