Dwayne Brown/Tabatha Thompson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726/3895
George Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
Sara Hammond
University of Arizona, Tucson
520-419-8071
Guy Webster/D.C. Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278/393-9011
RELEASE: 42-07
NEXT DEPARTURE FOR MARS STANDS READY TO FLY
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A NASA robotic explorer equipped to dig up and
analyze icy soil on Mars sits atop a 13-story tall stack of rocket
engines prepared for liftoff before sunup on Saturday.
A Delta II launch vehicle will carry the Phoenix Mars Lander into
Earth orbit and, about 90 minutes later, give it the push needed to
send it to Mars. A three-week period when planetary positions are
favorable for this launch begins with an opportunity at 5:26:34 a.m.
EDT on Aug. 4. A second opportunity the same day, if needed, will
come at 6:02:59 a.m. EDT.
"We have worked for four years to get to this point, so we are all
very excited," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "Our attention after
launch will be focused on flying the spacecraft to our selected
landing site, preparing for surface operations, and continuing our
relentless examination and testing for the all-important descent and
landing on May 25 of next year."
Phoenix will travel 422 million miles in an outward arc from Earth to
Mars. It will determine whether icy soil on far northern Mars has
conditions that have ever been suitable for life.
Studies of potential landing sites by spacecraft orbiting Mars led
NASA to approve a site at 68.35 degrees north latitude -- the
equivalent of northern Alaska -- and 233.0 degrees east longitude.
"Phoenix investigates the recent Odyssey discovery of near-surface ice
in the northern plains on Mars," said Phoenix Principal Investigator
Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "Our instruments
are specially designed to find evidence for periodic melting of the
ice and to assess whether this large region represents a habitable
environment for Martian microbes."
The Phoenix mission was proposed in 2002 by an international team led
by Smith. Twenty-four other teams also submitted proposals to be the
first Mars Scout mission. NASA chose Phoenix in 2003. Phoenix uses a
lander structure built for the 2001 Mars Surveyor mission, which was
scaled down before launch to an orbiter-only mission.
"The spacecraft system and software development matured early in the
program. This enabled us to thoroughly test a stable lander design
over the entire integration and test schedule period," said Ed
Sedivy, spacecraft program manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems.
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at the
JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in
Denver. The NASA Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center and
the United Launch Alliance are responsible for the Delta II launch
service. International contributions are provided by the Canadian
Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the
University of Copenhagen, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany;
and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Additional
information on Phoenix is available online at:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu Additional information on NASA's Mars program is available online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mars
