NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander monitors the atmosphere overhead and reaches
out to the soil below in this stereo illustration of the spacecraft fully
deployed on the surface of Mars. The image appears three-dimensional when
viewed through red-green stereo glasses.
Phoenix has been assembled and tested for launch in August 2007 from Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., and for landing in May or June 2008 on
an arctic plain of far-northern Mars. The mission responds to evidence
returned from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter in 2002 indicating that most
high-latitude areas on Mars have frozen water mixed with soil within arm's
reach of the surface.
Phoenix will use a robotic arm to dig down to the expected icy layer. It
will analyze scooped-up samples of the soil and ice for factors that will
help scientists evaluate whether the subsurface environment at the site
ever was, or may still be, a favorable habitat for microbial life. The
instruments on Phoenix will also gather information to advance
understanding about the history of the water in the icy layer. A weather
station on the lander will conduct the first study Martian arctic weather
from ground level.
The vertical green line in this illustration shows how the weather station
on Phoenix will use a laser beam from a lidar instrument to monitor dust
and clouds in the atmosphere. 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.
