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Phoenix


Did you send your name to Mars on Phoenix? You can still find and print your participation certificate.

Phoenix landed on Mars at 23:38 UTC (16:38 PDT) on May 25, 2008. Its mission was short, limited by the availability of sunlight at its extreme northern landing site. The last transmission from Phoenix was a faint signal received by Mars Odyssey on November 2, 2008.

Most of Mars is dry, but, near its poles, there is abundant water ice, both on the surface and buried just below it. The Phoenix lander stretched out a digging arm to trench into the soil and reach that buried ice. By studying the structure, composition, and chemistry of soil and ice samples within Phoenix's trench, scientists hope to learn about the history of water on Mars and the potential for biologic activity to take place there.

In addition to its scientific instruments, the spacecraft carried a mini-DVD contributed by The Planetary Society. Encoded on it is Visions of Mars -- a collection of art and literature about Mars from the past century, and recorded greetings to future explorers of Mars. Also included are 250,000 names of Planetary Society members and other space enthusiasts who signed up to send their names to Mars.

Phoenix consists of a spacecraft that had already been built to fly as the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander, which was canceled after the failure of Mars Polar Lander in 1999. It will also re-fly several science instruments that were lost with Mars Polar Lander.

Studies of potential landing sites by spacecraft orbiting Mars led NASA to approve a landing site at a latitude that is the equivalent of northern Alaska. The exact landing location was 68.151 degrees north, 233.975 degrees east. The landing site is in an area that was predicted -- correctly, as it turned out -- to have a thin soil cover over ice or icy soil. Both Mars Odyssey and Mars Express have mapped broad-scale areas where they predict near-surface ice, and the sharper-eyed Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have been used to search for morphological clues like patterned ground. Data from all spacecraft were used to find a spot that was safe for Phoenix to land.

Phoenix Facts
Launch date: August 4, 2007 at 09:26:34 UTC
Mars landing: for May 25, 2008 at 23:38 UTC (16:38 PDT)
Mission end: November 2, 2008