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 tonight.
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 during the
spacecraft's cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes
before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian
atmosphere. Batteries 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 (10 and 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time) from a Phoenix
transmission relayed via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
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.
"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.
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.
SOURCE NASA
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