NASA's next Mars-bound spacecraft, the Phoenix Mars Lander, was partway
through assembly and testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, in
September 2006, progressing toward an August 2007 launch from Florida. In
this photograph, spacecraft specialists work on the lander after its
fan-like circular solar arrays have been spread open for testing. The
arrays will be in this configuration when the spacecraft is active on the
surface of Mars.
Phoenix will land in icy soils near the north polar permanent ice cap of
Mars and explore the history of the water in these soils and any
associated rocks, while monitoring polar climate. It will dig into the
surface, test scooped-up samples for carbon-bearing compounds and serve as
NASA's first exploration of a potential modern habitat on Mars.
The Phoenix mission is led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of the
University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership with Lockheed Martin
Space Systems. International contributions for Phoenix are provided by the
Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), the
University of Copenhagen, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. JPL is
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
