Stalking Venus

Radio signals received at 21:55:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time / GMT) on Saturday confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Michael Griffin, the NASA Administrator noted that this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976:

For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars. I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement.

The journey to Mars is a 144 million miles, and the Phoenix made use of electricity generated by solar panels mounted on a special cruise stage, or module of the the craft. This stage was jettisoned only seven minutes before the lander began it’s descent into the Martian atmosphere. During the descent, during which a special protective casing kept the lander safe from harm, battery power was used to keep the craft’s instruments running. Upon safe landing on the surface, the Phoenix could unfurl it’s own solar arrays and begin to harvest solar energy to convert to electricity.

Barry Goldstein, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and also the Phoenix project’s team leader was ecstatic at the successful landing:

We’ve passed the hardest part and we’re breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power.

Says Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission:

What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our mission.

One of the critical mission goals is the successful deployment of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix. This won’t be attempted until at least the middle of the week. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

In 1999, a similar landing attempt was made but failed, causing a spacecraft that was being built for a launch in 2001 to be cancelled. Parts of this cancelled craft were integrated into the current Phoenix lander. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity.

In 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Sources: NASA, Phoenix Project