NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander uses its Meteorological Station and its Robotic Arm at the same time in this artist's concept of the spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

The other instruments in the spacecraft's science payload are the Surface Stereoscopic Imager; the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer; the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer; the Mars Descent Imager; and the Robotic Arm Camera.

The dark "wings" to either side of the lander's main body are solar panels for providing electric power.

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, Denver. International contributions for Phoenix are provided by the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), the Max Planck Institute (Germany) and the Finnish Meteorological institute. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/Lockheed Martin

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