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May
25, 2008: 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. The cruise stage with those solar panels was
jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective
shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries will now
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 from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA's
Mars Odyssey orbiter.
[Update:
The solar arrays have deployed!]
![](images/phoenix2/firstshots_strip2.jpg)
Above:
First pictures beamed back to Earth from Phoenix's arctic
landing site. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of
Arizona. [more]
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.
[Update:
The stereo camera and 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.
Check http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
for updates.
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Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
more
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Phoenix
--mission home page
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.
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