Mars Phoenix Lander says good-bye

William Atkins
Tuesday, 11 November 2008 02:41

Science - Space

Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson) stated, “Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come.”

The NASA media release added these facts about the Phoenix Lander mission, “Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface."

"The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet's soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002."

"Phoenix's cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth.”

In conclusion, Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California) stated, “Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team."

The NASA media released added its conclusions: “Phoenix's preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.”

Thanks to the Phoenix Mars Lander and its mission team for a job well done!