Catalog Page for PIA10670

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PIA10670: Family of Orbiters

This image shows the paths of three spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars, as well as the path by which NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will approach and land on the planet.

Mission:	Phoenix
Product Size:	720 x 543 pixels (w x h)
Produced By:	JPL
Full-Res TIFF:	PIA10670.tif (1.175 MB)
Full-Res JPEG:	PIA10670.jpg (28.88 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This image shows the paths of three spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars, as well as the path by which NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will approach and land on the planet. The t-shaped crosses show where the orbiters will be when Phoenix enters the atmosphere, while the x-shaped crosses show their location at landing time.

All three orbiters, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA's Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's Mars Express, will be monitoring Phoenix during the final steps of its journey to the Red Planet.

Phoenix will land just south of Mars's north polar ice cap.

Photojournal Note: As planned, the Phoenix lander, which landed May 25, 2008 23:53 UTC, ended communications in November 2008, about six months after landing, when its solar panels ceased operating in the dark Martian winter.

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:

2008-05-24