A NASA spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Mars and successfully landed in the Red Planet’s northern polar region on Sunday, where it will begin 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life. Cheers swept through mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the touchdown signal from the Phoenix Mars Lander was detected after a nailbiting descent. Engineers and scientists hugged and high-fived one another
May 25th, 2008
A look at NASA’s latest mission to the red planet
NASA has successfully landed five robots on Mars over the past three decades. Its latest spacecraft, Phoenix Mars, will touch down in the Martian arctic region on Sunday. Here’s why NASA is going again.
May 25th, 2008
Phoenix Lands Safely On Mars
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander survived its fiery plunge through the Red Planet’s atmosphere in Sunday and made a bull’s-eye touchdown near its north pole. The robotic craft, designed to dig into the icy soil to determine if the permafrost could have supported primitive life, landed as planned at 7:38 p.m. ET Sunday under a sunny Martian sky. It took another 15 minutes for the radio signals confirming the safe landing to travel the 170 million miles (270 million kilometers) from Mars to Earth.
May 4th, 2008
Phoenix Lander Takes Aim at Martian Arctic
NASA’s Mars-bound Phoenix spacecraft is gearing up for a landmark landing near the martian north pole this month to find out whether the region could have once supported microbial life.
Phoenix is on course for a planned May 25 touchdown in the martian arctic that, if successful, will mark the first powered landing on Mars since NASA’s hefty Viking 2 lander set down in 1976. But first, the probe is expected to fire its thrusters several times in the next few weeks to fine-tune its flight path.
“It’s scary how smooth it’s been,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “The vehicle has just been behaving beautifully.”
April 13th, 2008
Lander Zeroes in On Martian North Pole
NASA’s next spacecraft to visit Mars has changed course to zero in on its red planet landing site.
The Phoenix Mars Lander fired its thrusters for 35 seconds Thursday to fine-tune its heading for a planned May 25 landing near the Martian north pole.
“This is our first trajectory maneuver targeting a specific location in the northern polar region of Mars,” said Brian Portock, chief of NASA’s Phoenix navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.
Phoenix’s targeted drop zone is an area that mission scientists have dubbed “Green Valley.” The region is a broad, flat valley where mission planners plan to land Phoenix somewhere within a 62-mile by 12-mile (100-km by 20-km) ellipse.
September 9th, 2007
Phoenix Spacecraft Passes In-Flight Tests
Several crucial devices aboard NASA’s Mars-bound Phoenix lander have passed in-flight testing.
Mission managers remotely inspected Phoenix’s descent-monitoring radar as well as its UHF radio, which will communicate with Mars satellites after it reaches the red planet’s surface on May 25, 2008. The instruments passed all tests with flying colors as the craft zooms through space at 76,000 mph (34 kilometers per second).
“Everything is going as planned. No surprises, but this is one of those times when boring is good,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
August 5th, 2007
Red Planet Rising: NASA’s Phoenix Probe Launches Towards Mars
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander lit up the predawn Florida sky Saturday, launching spaceward on a mission to determine whether the planet could have once supported primitive life.
A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket launched Phoenix towards Mars at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (0926:34 GMT) from Pad 17A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The three-stage booster is bound for the flat northern plains of Vastitas Borealis near the martian north pole, where it is expected to dig into and sample the region’s icy soil with its eight-foot (2.4-meter) robotic arm.
“It’s a wonderful morning to go to Mars,” NASA’s Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein, of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), just before liftoff. As predicted, weather conditions were pristine for the early morning space shot. The launch was delayed 24 hours earlier this week due to bad weather during rocket fueling.
Just after the supersonic crackle of the launch, Phoenix officials let out gasps of excitement as the rocket careened toward Mars.
August 2nd, 2007
Phoenix Launch Looking Good for Saturday
At the Phoenix prelaunch news conference, NASA’s Launch Director Chuck Dovale said the launch team is ready to go for Saturday’s early morning liftoff. Weather Officer Joel Tumbiolo reports favorable conditions for launch time, with only a 20 percent chance of weather preventing liftoff. The forecast calls for scattered clouds, light ground and upper-level winds, and good visibility.
The launch preparations got back on track after a one-day delay because of severe weather in the vicinity of the launch pad on Tuesday that prevented the Delta II launch team from completing the fueling of the rocket’s second stage.
The Phoenix Mars lander’s assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.
February 6th, 2007
Last Chance to Hitch a Ride to Mars The Planetary Society
Only a few days remain to fly your name – or those of family members and friends – to Mars.
This summer, The Planetary Society will send a DVD containing the names of individuals from around the world to Mars aboard NASA’s first Scout mission, Phoenix. Once a name is entered on The Planetary Society website, a certificate can be downloaded, stating the name’s inclusion on the archival message from Earth to Mars. So far, about 200,000 people from more than 70 countries have signed up to send their names.
The deadline for submitting names has just been extended to February 12, 2007 at Noon, Pacific time. People everywhere are encouraged to submit names to fly to Mars, including those of children and grandchildren, classmates, or even a favorite family pet.
The disk will also include “Visions of Mars,” a collection of 19th and 20th century stories and art by some of Earth’s visionaries.
February 6th, 2007
NASA Scrambles for Alternate Mars Landing Site
Scientists are scrambling to find an alternative landing site for a long-armed robot set to launch this summer on a mission to dig into Mars’ icy north pole to search for signs of primitive life.
The original landing spot was nixed after images beamed back by the eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter unexpectedly showed scores of bus-sized boulders littered over old crater rims on flat plains.
The gigantic rocks pose a danger to NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander, which unlike the rolling twin rovers, will be stationary, mission principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona said during a news teleconference Thursday.