www.nasa.gov

The good news; NASA got more than the anticipated amount of scientific data.  More than 25,000 pictures, soil analysis and detailed weather observations from 152 days on Mars contributed to years of scientific data received by project teams for NASA, JPL and the University of Arizona.

So far scientists have discovered small concentrations of salts, a mildly alkaline soil and calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.  The Phoenix Lander also coordinated with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

The study continues into the history of the Martian environment, as the next Mars mission gets ready for launch; the Mars Science Laboratory.

View the latest pictures from the Phoenix Mars Lander at www.nasa.gov.

As autumn weather conditions deteriorate and temperatures fall, the Phoenix Mars Lander uses more power than it generates, so it’s only a matter of time before the robot explorer will expire.  It’s a real tribute to the engineering teams how well this spacecraft has exceeded it’s intended capacity for scientific exploration.

It’s no wonder the lander is starting to shut down.  The weather conditions on planet Mars in the northern hemisphere are pretty fierce, and getting more extreme as the planet shifts into it’s autumn phase.  Huge dust storms and atmospheric ice clouds block out sunlight to solar panels that generate power to spacecraft.  Extreme temperatures range from -141 degrees (F) overnight to -50 degrees (F) during the day.

NASA The Latest from Mars www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars

JPL/NASA/University of Arizona News Release: 2008-090 May 30, 2008

Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars on Sunday May 25th.  The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.

“We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone,” said Ray Arvidson of Washington University , St. Louis , Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm.  “We’ll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera.  We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.

Testing last night of a Phoenix instrument that bakes and sniffs samples to identify ingredients identified a possible short circuit.  The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer.  It includes a calorimeter that tracks how much heat is needed to melt or vaporize substances in a sample, plus a mass spectrometer to examine vapors driven off by the heat.  The Thursday, May 29, tests recorded electrical behavior consistent with an intermittent short circuit in the spectrometer portion.

“We have developed a strategy to gain a better understanding of this behavior, and we have identified workarounds for some of the possibilities,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona , Tucson , lead scientist for the instrument.

The latest data from the Canadian Space Agency’s weather station shows another sunny day at the Phoenix landing site with temperatures holding at minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) as the sol’s high, and a low of minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit).  The lidar instrument was activated for a 15-minute period just before noon local Mars time, and showed increasing dust in the atmosphere.

“This is the first time lidar technology has been used on the surface of another planet,” said the meteorological station’s chief engineer, Mike Daly, from MDA in Brampton , Canada .  “The team is elated that we are getting such interesting data about the dust dynamics in the atmosphere.”

“We have evaluated the performance of the spacecraft on the surface and found we’re ready to move forward.  While we are still investigating instrument performance such as the anomaly on TEGA [Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer], the spacecraft’s infrastructure has passed its tests and gets a clean bill of health,” said David Spencer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy project manager for Phoenix.

“We’re still in the process of checking out our instruments,” Phoenix project scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL said. “The process is designed to be very flexible, to respond to discoveries and issues that come up every day. We’re in the process of taking images and getting color information that will help us understand soil properties. This will help us understand where best to first touch the soil and then where and how best to dig.”

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.

For more about Phoenix visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu

JPL/NASA/University of Arizona News Release: 2008-083 for May 26, 2008

A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander’s successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25th.

The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.

Meanwhile, scientists pored over initial images from Phoenix , the first ever taken from the surface of Mars’ polar regions.

“We can see cracks in the troughs that make us think the ice is still modifying the surface,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona , Tucson .

“I’m floored. I’m absolutely floored,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. A team analyzing what can be learned from the Phoenix descent through the Martian atmosphere will use the image to reconstruct events.

The Phoenix mission is led by 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.

JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver , Colo. , is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The University of Arizona operates the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp., Boulder , Colo.

Read more about Phoenix at www.nasa.gov/phoenix

Phoenix Mars Mission http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu

NASA Phoenix Mars Lander www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main

“Mars is literally pulling on our spacecraft, and at the same time it is pulling on our emotions,” Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona , Tucson , said early Sunday afternoon.

“We are excited at how close we are right now to beginning our study of a site where Martian water ice will be within our reach, after all these years of preparations. Our science mission begins as the spacecraft settles into its new home on Mars.”
Source: JPL/NASA/University of Arizona News Release: 2008-080 5/25/08

Shortly after the annual 500-mile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Phoenix will be approaching Mars at about 12,750 miles per hour. After it enters the top of the Martian atmosphere at that velocity, it must use superheated friction with the atmosphere, a strong parachute and a set of pulsing retrorockets to achieve a safe, three-legged standstill touchdown on the surface in just seven minutes. That’s the scariest seven minutes of the entire mission.

The earliest possible time when mission controllers could get confirmation from Phoenix indicating it has survived landing will be at 7:53 p.m. Eastern Time.

The landing site is expected to have ice-rich permafrost beneath the surface, but within reach of the lander’s eight-foot robotic arm. Phoenix is equipped to study the history of the water now frozen into the site’s permafrost, to check for carbon-containing chemicals that are essential ingredients for life, and to monitor polar-region weather on Mars from a surface perspective for the first time.

The Phoenix mission is led by the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin. 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.

Read more about Phoenix at:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu