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
