Launch Date: August 04, 2007 Mission Project Home Page -
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php Named for the
mythological bird that rose out of the fire to be reborn,
Phoenix was the new Lander for NASA's last Mars mission landing
in the Martian northern plains in May 2008. The Mission had two
bold objectives: (1) study the history of water in the Martian
arctic and (2) search for evidence of a habitable zone and
assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary. Mars
is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. But
in the Martian arctic, water ice lurks just below ground level.
Discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2002 show large
amounts of subsurface water ice in the northern arctic. This
information dovetails with other scientific information sent
back to Earth from other Mars missions suggesting that water
played an important role in Mars past. The Phoenix lander
targets the northern circumpolar region using a robotic arm to
dig through the protective top-soil layer to