Phoenix Landing on Mars
NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 15:29:57 -0500
From: info@JSC.NASA.GOV
Subject: NASA PHOENIX WATER ICE, SOIL FINDINGS POINT TO CLIMATE CYCLES
July 6, 2009
William P. Jeffs
Johnson Space Center, Houston
July 6, 2009
Report #J09-015
NASA PHOENIX WATER ICE, SOIL FINDINGS POINT TO CLIMATE CYCLES
HOUSTON—NASA’s Phoenix mission landed inside the Martian Arctic Circle on May 25, 2008. Phoenix’s instruments searched for water ice and for evidence of mineral nutrients essential to life in the Martian soil. Both were found.
Phoenix's goal was to determine the habitability of the northern polar region of Mars. The water ice found and the soil chemistry and minerals observed lead scientists to believe that the landing site had a wetter and warmer climate in the last few million years and could again in the future.
Interpretations of data that Phoenix returned during its five months of operation are reported in the July 3 issue of the journal Science. Scientists in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Directorate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston are among the co-authors of three of the papers: “H2O at the Phoenix Landing Site,” “Detection of Perchlorate and the Soluble Chemistry of Martian Soil at the Phoenix Lander Site” and “Evidence for Calcium Carbonate at the Mars Phoenix Landing Site.” The ARES scientists are Doug Ming, Dick Morris, Paul Niles and Brad Sutter.
The announcement on July 30, 2008, that the science team had discovered water ice at the Phoenix landing site was a promising sign that the Mars environment could be habitable to life. In “H2O at the Phoenix Landing Site,” the authors cite evidence for subsurface water ice exposed by digging with the robotic arm scoop and several lines of evidence that support the interpretation that the Martian soil has thin films of water.
“It was fantastic to see that the water ice was actually present just below the surface and to watch it sublimate away, just like the ice in my freezer at home,” said Morris.
In “Detection of Perchlorate and the Soluble Chemistry of Martian Soil at the Phoenix Lander Site,” the authors state that chemical analysis of the soil revealed that most of the soluble chlorine is in the form of perchlorate. Perchlorate was detected in soil analyzed by the wet chemistry lab aboard the Phoenix Lander. Soil perchlorate is found on Earth but only at low concentration in the most hyper-arid regions like the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Atmospheric processes responsible for perchlorate formation in the Atacama could also be operating on Mars.
Perchlorate, which strongly attracts water, makes up a few percent of the composition in all three soil samples analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory. It could pull humidity from the Martian air. At higher concentrations, it might combine with water as a brine that stays liquid at Martian surface temperatures. Some microbes on Earth use perchlorate as food and it is also a strong oxidizer that releases oxygen when heated.
“The discovery of perchlorate salts was a big surprise,” said Ming. “We did not detect any organic molecules, but it is possible that if organic compounds were present in soil they were burned by the perchlorate oxidizer during heating and not detected by Phoenix instruments.” Organic compounds are the building blocks of life.
In “Evidence for Calcium Carbonate at the Mars Phoenix Landing Site,” the authors discuss the discovery of calcium carbonate in the soils around the Phoenix landing site. The authors suggest that the calcium carbonate detected “is most consistent with formation in the past by the interaction of atmospheric carbon dioxide with liquid films of water on particle surfaces." Carbonates are generally products of aqueous processes and may hold important clues about the history of liquid water on the surface of Mars.
“The detection of calcium carbonate was very exciting for us,” said Sutter. “The calcium carbonate concentration at the Phoenix landing site is about about four percent by weight, and it was especially rewarding to see that our laboratory work was crucial in making that determination.”
“The Phoenix discovery of carbonates in the soils of Mars has turned the previously popular notion of an acidic Mars on its head,” said Niles. “We are now faced with two contrasting chemical views – acidic and alkaline. The next decade of Martian science will be focused on unraveling these two intertwined but opposing views of the conditions of water on the Martian surface.”
For more about Phoenix, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Rachel Prucey 650-604-0643
NASA Ames Research Center , Moffett Field , Calif.
rachel.l.prucey@nasa.gov
Lori Stiles 520-626-4402
University of Arizona, Tucson
lstiles@u.arizona.edu
News release: 2008-236 December 15, 2008
Phoenix Site on Mars May Be in Dry Climate Cycle Phase
PASADENA, Calif. -- The Martian arctic soil that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander dug into this year is very cold and very dry. However, when long-term climate cycles make the site warmer, the soil may get moist enough to modify the chemistry, producing effects that persist through the colder times.
Phoenix found clues increasing scientists' confidence in predictive models about water vapor moving through the soil between the atmosphere and subsurface water-ice. The models predict the vapor flow can wet the soil when the tilt of Mars' axis, the obliquity, is greater than it is now.
The robot worked on Mars for three months of prime mission, plus two months of overtime, after landing on May 25. The Phoenix science team will be analyzing data and running comparison experiments for months to come. With some key questions still open, team members at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union today reported on their progress.
"We have snowfall from the clouds and frost at the surface, with ice just a few inches below, and dry soil in between," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona , Tucson . "During a warmer climate several million years ago, the ice would have been deeper, but frost on the surface could have melted and wet the soil."
With no large moon like Earth's to stabilize it, Mars goes through known periodic cycles when its tilt becomes much greater than Earth's. During those high-tilt periods, the sun rises higher in the sky above the Martian poles than it does now, and the arctic plain where Phoenix worked experiences warmer summers.
"The ice under the soil around Phoenix is not a sealed-off deposit left from some ancient ocean," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis , lead scientist for the lander's robotic arm. "It is in equilibrium with the environment, and the environment changes with the obliquity cycles on scales from hundreds of thousands of years to a few million years. There have probably been dozens of times in the past 10 million years when thin films of water were active in the soil, and probably there will be dozens more times in the next 10 million years."
Cloddy texture of soil scooped up by Phoenix is one clue to effects of water. The mission's microscopic examination of the soil shows individual particles characteristic of windblown dust and sand, but clods of the soil hold together more cohesively than expected for unaltered dust and sand. Arvidson said, "It's not strongly cemented. It would break up in your hand, but the cloddiness tells us that something is taking the windblown material and mildly cementing it."
That cementing effect could result from water molecules adhering to the surfaces of soil particles. Or it could be from water mobilizing and redepositing salts that Phoenix identified in the soil, such as magnesium perchlorate and calcium carbonate.
The Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe on Phoenix detected electrical-property changes consistent with accumulation of water molecules on surfaces of soil grains during daily cycles of water vapor moving through the soil, reported Aaron Zent of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., lead scientist for that probe.
"There's exchange between the atmosphere and the subsurface ice," Zent said. "A film of water molecules accumulates on the surfaces of mineral particles. It's not enough right now to transform the chemistry, but the measurements are providing verification that these molecular films are occurring when you would expect them to, and this gives us more confidence in predicting the way they would behave in other parts of the obliquity cycles."
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. , 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; and Imperial College, London. For more about Phoenix , visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix.
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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
News Release: 2008-215 November 18, 2008
NASA Invites Students to Name New Mars Rover
WASHINGTON -- NASA is looking for the right stuff, or in this case, the right name for the next Mars rover. NASA, in cooperation with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures' movie WALL-E from Pixar Animation Studios, will conduct a naming contest for its car-sized Mars Science Laboratory rover that is scheduled for launch in 2009.
The contest begins Tuesday, Nov. 18, and is open to students 5 to 18 years old who attend a U.S. school and are enrolled in the current academic year. To enter the contest, students will submit essays explaining why their suggested name for the rover should be chosen. Essays must be received by Jan. 25, 2009. In March 2009, the public will have an opportunity to rank nine finalist names via the Internet as additional input for judges to consider during the selection process. NASA will announce the winning rover name in April 2009.
Disney will provide prizes to students submitting winning essays, including a trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , Calif. , where the rover is under construction. The grand prize winner will have an opportunity to place a signature on the spacecraft and take part in the history of space exploration.
"Mars exploration has always captured the public imagination," said Mark Dahl, program executive for the Mars Science Laboratory at NASA Headquarters in Washington . "This contest will expand our ability to inspire students' interest in science and give the public a chance to participate in NASA's next expedition to Mars."
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in Burbank , Calif. , will make it possible for WALL-E, the name of its animated robotic hero and summer 2008 movie, to appear in online content inviting students to participate in the naming contest. The online WALL-E content will provide young viewers with a current connection to the human-robotic partnership that is transforming discovery and exploration. The contest coincides with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's release of WALL-E on DVD and Blu-ray. The naming contest partnership is part of a Space Act Agreement between NASA and Disney designed to use the appeal of WALL-E in educational and public outreach efforts.
"All of us at Disney are delighted to be working with NASA in its educational and public outreach efforts to teach schoolchildren about space exploration, robot technology and the universe in which they live," said Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group. "WALL-E is one of the most lovable and entertaining characters that Pixar has ever created, and he is the perfect spokes-robot for this program."
The Mars Science Laboratory rover will be larger and more capable than any craft previously sent to land there. It will check whether the environment in a carefully selected landing region ever has been favorable for supporting microbial life. The rover will search for minerals that formed in the presence of water and look for several chemical building blocks of life.
"We are now in a phase when we're building and testing the rover before its journey to Mars," said John Klein, deputy project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory at JPL. "As the rover comes together and begins to take shape, the whole team can't wait to call it by name."
Additional assignments include imaging its surroundings in high definition, analyzing rocks with a high-powered laser beam, inspecting rocks and soil with a six-foot robotic arm, and cooking and sniffing rock powder delivered from a hammering drill to investigate what minerals are in Martian rocks.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena , manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Information about the contest is available at http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov . More information on Mars Science Laboratory is at http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .
-end-
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Lori Stiles 520-626-4402
University of Arizona, Tucson
lstiles@email.arizona.edu
Above: This series of six images from the Robotic Arm Camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander records the first time that the four spikes of the lander's thermal and electrical conductivity probe were inserted into Martian soil.
To view all raw images from the University of Arizona follow this link:
Above: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Robotic Arm comes into contact with a rock informally named "Alice" near the "Snow White" trench.
Above: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is enlarging a trench informally named "Snow White" to prepare a cleaned-off area at the top of a subsurface layer of hard material, possibly ice-rich soil.
Pheonix 5
Pheonix 3
Pheonix 16
NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.
From a distance of about 760 kilometers (472 miles) above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 10-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but correspond to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.
Phoenix released its parachute at an altitude of about 12.6 kilometers (7.8 miles) and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound.
The HiRISE acquired this image on May 25, 2008, at 4:36 p.m. Pacific Time (7:36 p.m. Eastern Time). It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Composit of 3 seperate images, click on image for high resolution image.
Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53 Eastern Time), May 25, 2008, in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.
This image was taken shortly after landing by the spacecraft's Surface Stereo Imager.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Image above from Unversity of Arizona Raw images. Hope to get high resolution of this picture, trying to figure out what the white artifact is in upper left.
Camera on Mars Orbiter Snaps Phoenix During Landing
PASADENA, Calif. -- 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 25.
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. Phoenix returned information that it was in good health after its first night on Mars, and the Phoenix team sent the spacecraft its to-do list for the day.
"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 . "We see fresh cracks. Cracks can't be old. They would fill in."
Phoenix 17
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera acquired this image of Phoenix hanging from its parachute as it descended to the Martian surface. Shown here is a 10 kilometer (6 mile) diameter crater informally called "Heimdall," and an improved full-resolution image of the parachute and lander. Although it appears that Phoenix is descending into the crater, it is actually about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) in front of the crater.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Phoenix from orbit
This shows a color image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. It shows the Phoenix lander with its solar panels deployed on the Mars surface.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Mission scientists are eager to move Phoenix's robotic arm.
NASA Mars Lander Prepares to Move Arm
May 27, 2008
NASA's Phoenix Lander is ready to begin moving its robotic arm, first unlatching its wrist and then flexing its elbow.
Mission scientists are eager to move Phoenix's robotic arm, for that arm will deliver samples of icy terrain to their instruments made to study this unexplored Martian environment.
The team sent commands for moving the arm on Tuesday morning, May 27, to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for relay to Phoenix. However, the orbiter did not relay those commands to the lander, so arm movement and other activities are now planned for Wednesday. The orbiter's communication-relay system is in a standby mode. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is available for relaying communications between Earth and Phoenix.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter did send back spectacular first images of the landed Phoenix from orbit, views from the Phoenix lander of where it will work for the next three months, and a preliminary weather report.
Messages from Earth CD and U.S. Flag
Thousands of People will be there with Them.
Thousands of people from around the world, joined our age's visionaries of space exploration by adding their names to this remarkable message to the future! The Planetary Society collected names, which are now on Mars on the Phoenix DVD. When the Martians of the future find and decode our message to them, their names will be there too, a permanent record of their part in the story of space exploration.
After landing, the spacecraft's scientific instruments will come alive, and begin their search for water ice in the harsh Martian environment. Nestled among busy instruments, a small and very special DVD will wait patiently for its turn. This unique DVD is made of silica glass, and designed to last hundreds if not thousands of years into the future, when its true mission will commence. It carries nothing less than a message from our world to one centuries away, when humans will roam the Red Planet.
In a unique project called Visions of Mars, the Phoenix DVD carries personal messages from visionaries of our own time to future visitors or settlers on Mars. There is Carl Sagan near his home in Ithaca, New York, addressing the future Martians with a cascading water fall in the background. There is Arthur Clarke seated in the comfort of his home in tropical Sri Lanka. There is Planetary Society Executive Director Louis Friedman, speaking from Society headquarters in Pasadena, and there is Phoenix mission PI, Peter Smith, providing mission information and a greeting to the future.
Phoenix Takes Microscopic Image of Scoop Contents
June 26, 2008
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet chemistry experiment on Martian soil flawlessly yesterday, returning a wealth of data that for Phoenix scientists was like winning the lottery.
"We are awash in chemistry data," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, instrument on Phoenix. "We're trying to understand what is the chemistry of wet soil on Mars, what's dissolved in it, how acidic or alkaline it is. With the results we received from Phoenix yesterday, we could begin to tell what aspects of the soil might support life."
"This is the first wet-chemical analysis ever done on Mars or any planet, other than Earth," said Phoenix co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, science lead for the wet chemistry investigation.
About 80 percent of Phoenix's first, two-day wet chemistry experiment is now complete. Phoenix has three more wet-chemistry cells for use later in the mission.
"This soil appears to be a close analog to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica," Kouvanes said. "The alkalinity of the soil at this location is definitely striking. At this specific location, one-inch into the surface layer, the soil is very basic, with a pH of between eight and nine. We also found a variety of components of salts that we haven't had time to analyze and identify yet, but that include magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride."
"This is more evidence for water because salts are there. We also found a reasonable number of nutrients, or chemicals needed by life as we know it," Kounaves said. "Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world, but that in many aspects, like mineralogy, it's very much like Earth."
Another analytical Phoenix instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), has baked its first soil sample to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Never before has a soil sample from another world been baked to such high heat.
TEGA scientists have begun analyzing the gases released at a range of temperatures to identify the chemical make-up of soil and ice. Analysis is a complicated, weeks-long process.
But "the scientific data coming out of the instrument have been just spectacular," said Phoenix co-investigator William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead TEGA scientist.
"At this point, we can say that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past. We don't know whether that interaction occurred in this particular area in the northern polar region, or whether it might have happened elsewhere and blown up to this area as dust."
Leslie Tamppari, the Phoenix project scientist from JPL, tallied what Phoenix has accomplished during the first 30 Martian days of its mission, and outlined future plans.
The Stereo Surface Imager has by now completed about 55 percent of its three-color, 360-degree panorama of the Phoenix landing site, Tamppari said. Phoenix has analyzed two samples in its optical microscope as well as first samples in both TEGA and the wet chemistry laboratory. Phoenix has been collecting information daily on clouds, dust, winds, temperatures and pressures in the atmosphere, as well as taking first nighttime atmospheric measurements.
Lander cameras confirmed that white chunks exposed during trench digging were frozen water ice because they sublimated, or vaporized, over a few days. The Phoenix robotic arm dug and sampled, and will continue to dig and sample, at the 'Snow White' trench in the center of a polygon in the polygonal terrain.
"We believe this is the best place for creating a profile of the surface from the top down to the anticipated icy layer," Tamppari said. "This is the plan we wanted to do when we proposed the mission many years ago. We wanted a place just like this where we could sample the soil down to the possible ice layer."
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in 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 information on the Phoenix mission, link to http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
Media contacts:
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu
J.D. Harrington 202 358-5241
NASA Headquarters
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov