Aug 4 2007
From The Space Library
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander launched aboard a Delta-2 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 9:36 (UT). The 350-kilogram (772-pound) Lander carried scientific instruments and a robotic arm that would vertically penetrate the icy soil of the Vastitas Borealis, an arctic plain bearing similarities to central Greenland or northern Alaska. Phoenix’s instruments included eight onboard ovens designed to analyze vapors from soil samples to identify the presence of organic compounds, which would indicate whether biological processes had occurred. To avoid contamination, Phoenix would use each oven just once. Phoenix also carried multi-spectral instruments that would collect data revealing the composition of Mars’s surface minerals and of its atmosphere, to an altitude of 20 kilometers (12.4 miles).
Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 646, 1 September 2007, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/spx646.html (accessed 14 June 2010); John Johnson Jr., “Phoenix Spacecraft Launches to Mars,” Los Angeles Times, 6 August 2007.
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