Credit: NASA

On 4 August 2007, NASA's Phoenix spacecraft lifted off on a mission to Mars, the Red Planet. Phoenix will land in the Martian arctic region to study the soil and ice.

The Phoenix spacecraft was launched aboard the Delta II rocket and ground controllers at NASA's Deep Space Network established radio contact with Phoenix and began examining its performance.

The spacecraft oriented itself to the Sun, according to schedule. Phoenix will deploy solar panels to generate electricity during the 9-month interplanetary cruise to Mars. The lander has a separate set of solar arrays.

"Today's launch is the first step in the long journey to the surface of Mars. We certainly are excited about launching, but we still are concerned about our actual landing, the most difficult step of this mission," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Phoenix will be the first mission to touch the Martian ice. Its robotic arm will dig into an icy layer believed to lie just beneath the surface. The mission will study the evolution of the ice, observe the weather of the polar region, and investigate whether the subsurface environment in the far-northern plains of Mars has ever been hospitable for microbial life.

"Water is central to every type of study we will conduct on Mars," said Smith.

"The launch team did a spectacular job getting us on the way," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Our trajectory is still being evaluated in detail; however we are well within expected limits for a successful journey to the red planet. We are all thrilled!"

The Phoenix Mars Mission is the first of NASA's Mars Scout missions, complementing the space agency's central Mars Exploration Program, whose topic is "follow the water." The University of Arizona was selected to manage the mission in August 2003 and is the first public university to lead a Mars exploration mission.

Samples collected by the lander's robotic arm will be analyzed by onboard instruments. One key instrument will search for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are released. Another will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the results.

Phoenix has cameras and microscopes that will provide information on size scales ranging 10 powers of 10, from features that could fit by the hundreds into a period at the end of a sentence to an aerial view taken during descent. A weather station will provide data on atmospheric processes in the polar region.

Further Reading

Phoenix Mission

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

NASA' Mars Program

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/main/index.html 

Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem

Senior Astronomy Specialist