New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Phoenix (spacecraft)

The Phoenix is a planned multi-agency Mars lander, headed by the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, under the direction of NASA, scheduled to launch on August 3, 2007. It is a partnership of universities, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the aerospace industry. Phoenix is scheduled to land in May 2008 in the planet's water-ice-rich northern polar region. It will dig its robotic arm into the arctic terrain searching for information on the history of water, and search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars. The mission has two goals. One is to study the geologic history of water, the key to unlocking the story of past climate change. The second is to search for evidence of a habitable zone that may exist in the ice-soil boundary, the "biological paydirt." The Phoenix's instruments are suitable for uncovering information on the geological and possibly biological history of the martian arctic. Because the Phoenix will be the first mission to return data from either of the poles, it will contribute to NASA's main strategy for Mars exploration, "Follow the water".

Related Stories
 


Space & Time News

September 12, 2025

NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission has uncovered surprising behavior of pickup ions drifting through the solar wind near Earth. These particles, once thought to be minor players, appear capable of generating waves and influencing how the ...
Physicists have unveiled a new superconducting detector sensitive enough to hunt dark matter particles smaller than electrons. By capturing faint photon signals, the device pushes the search into uncharted ...
Scientists caution that asteroid deflection must be precise, as striking the wrong spot risks sending it through a gravitational keyhole that sets up a future collision with Earth. Using lessons from NASA’s DART mission, researchers are developing ...
Scientists using Google’s quantum processor have taken a major step toward unraveling the deepest mysteries of the universe. By simulating fundamental interactions described by gauge theories, the ...
Astronomers using AI have captured a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event: a massive star’s violent death triggered by its black hole companion. The explosion, known as SN 2023zkd, not only produced a brilliant supernova but also shocked scientists by ...
NASA and ISRO s NISAR satellite has just reached a major milestone: the successful deployment of its enormous 39-foot antenna reflector in orbit. Folded up like an umbrella during launch, the reflector is now fully extended and ready to support ...
With its two tiny CubeSats, NASA’s PREFIRE mission is capturing invisible heat escaping from Earth, offering clues to how ice, clouds, and storms influence the climate system. The insights could lead to better weather forecasts and a deeper ...
Rising CO₂ levels will make the upper atmosphere colder and thinner, altering how geomagnetic storms impact satellites. Future storms could cause sharper density spikes despite lower overall density, increasing drag-related ...
Thirteen years after landing on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover is running smarter and more efficiently than ever. With new autonomy and multitasking capabilities, it’s maximizing the output from its long-lasting nuclear power source while ...
Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison uncovered a critical flaw in how lunar and Martian rovers are tested on Earth. Simulations revealed that test results have been misleading for decades because researchers only adjusted rover weight to ...
UF engineers, backed by DARPA and NASA, are perfecting laser-forming techniques that let metal sheets fold themselves into giant solar arrays, antennas, and even space-station parts right in ...
The LSST camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its jaw-dropping first images, each capturing 45 times the area of the full moon in one shot. Over the next ten years, this cosmic giant will scan the southern sky in ultra-HD, helping ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:56 pm ET