Phoenix Mission

Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission to Mars under the Mars Scout Program.

Phoenix launched successfully on August 4, 2007 on a Delta 7925 launch vehicle from Pad 17-A of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It is scheduled to land on Mars on May 25, 2008.

It is a multi-agency program which is being is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA.

The Phoenix Mission is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the aerospace industry. Phoenix is planned to land in the planet's water-ice-rich northern polar region and, if this is successful, will use its robotic arm to dig into the Arctic terrain.

Phoenix launched on 4 August 2007, at 5:26:34 am EDT (09:26:34 UTC) If successful, Phoenix will be the sixth lander to successfully touch down on Mars and the first since Viking 1 & 2 in 1976 to land using powered descent.

The Delta 7925 has a successful launch history, which includes launches of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers in 2003 and Mars Pathfinder in 1996.

The spacecraft has several subsystems which include

(1) command and data handling, controlling the spacecraft's computer processing,

(2) electrical power, consisting of solar panels, batteries, and associated converting circuits,

(3) telecommunications, ensuring flow of data to and from Earth,

(4) guidance, navigation, and control, assuring the spacecraft arrives safely at Mars,

(5) propulsion, controlling trajectory correction maneuvers during cruise and thrusters during landing,

(6) structure, providing the spacecraft framework and integrity,

(7) mechanisms, enabling the movement of several spacecraft components, and

(8) thermal-control, using heat transfer to ensure proper temperature ranges on all parts of the spacecraft.