NASA To Check For Unlikely Winter Survival Of Mars LanderJanuary 21, 2010 UPDATENASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has completed 11 overflights, listening for the Phoenix Mars Lander on Jan. 19 and 20, without hearing anything from the lander. Nineteen more listening overflights are planned this week, and additional attempts in February and March. The attempts are being made because of the unlikely scenario that Phoenix has survived Martian arctic winter conditions the spacecraft was never designed to withstand. Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008, and operated successfully about two months longer than its planned three-month mission near the Martian north polar region. End of Update Beginning Jan. 18, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will listen for possible, though improbable, radio transmissions from the Phoenix Mars Lander, which completed five months of studying an arctic Martian site in November 2008. The solar-powered lander operated two months longer than its three-month prime mission during summer on northern Mars before the seasonal ebb of sunshine ended its work. Since then, Phoenix's landing site has gone through autumn, winter and part of spring. The lander's hardware was not designed to survive the temperature extremes and ice-coating load of an arctic Martian winter. Read More  Peer Reviewed PapersScience MagazineH2O at the Phoenix Landing SiteAbstract | Full Text Smith, Peter et al Detection of Perchlorate and the Soluble Chemistry of Martian Soil at the Phoenix Lander Site Abstract | Full Text Hecht, Michael et al Evidence for Calcium Carbonate at the Mars Phoenix Landing Site Abstract | Full Text Boynton, William et al Accompanying Science Podcast       |
 Phoenix TributeMission Highlights - The Phoenix Mars Lander surpassed its original three-month mission, lasting five months in the Martian northern plains, digging up scientific 'firsts' along the way. Courtesy NASA/JPL-CaltechStandard (94 MB) High Definition (213 MB) Standard Podcast (26 MB) High Definition Podcast (82 MB) Released DataNASA's Planetary Data System announced the third and final release of data from the mission, including raw and derived data products from Sols (Martian days) 91 through 152, or July 27 through Oct. 29, 2008.Data for imaging instruments can be viewed at the imaging node site. The release also includes atmosphere and geoscience data. The site offers a search function for browsing specific Sol summary data using the Phoenix Analyst's Notebook. The site also offers a subscription feature to keep up to date with NASA's Planetary Data System. |
The Phoenix Mission is led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of The University of Arizona, supported by a science team of CO-Is, with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership with Lockheed Martin Space Systems. International contributions are provided by the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Additional information on Phoenix is online at here and here. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Additional information on NASA's Mars program is online at here.
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