Phoenix Lander shakes to loosen clumpy soil

William Atkins
Monday, 09 June 2008 22:46

Science - Space

Images taken by the Phoenix Lander on mission day Sol 14 are found at “Images Sol 14_56” and “Images Sol 14_51.”

Additional information about the mission of Phoenix Mars Lander is found at the NASA website "Exploring the Arctic Plain of Mars."

One of the goals of the Phoenix mission is to determine if the site where the spacecraft landed was ever a favorable place for microbial life to have developed.

The Lander cannot actually determine if microbial life ever existed, but it can provide evidence through the composition and texture of the soil as to whether life ever existed on Mars.

The Phoenix mission is also geared to finding out if any of the soil samples scooped up contains carbon-based chemicals, which are the basic building blocks for life.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith, principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Project management is provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Also involved with the Mars project is Lockheed Martin, Denver, Colorado.

International contributions come from 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.