Phoenix Mars
Lander Images
from Phoenix
Mission Homepage

Russia's
Mars - 500
Manned-Mission
Research

This will be done by: Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars; Support of more aggressive government-funded Mars exploration programs around the world; and Mars exploration conducted on a private basis. Starting small, with hitchhiker payloads on government-funded missions, we intend to use the credibility that such activity will engender to mobilize larger resources that will enable standalone, private robotic missions and ultimately human exploration.

The Mars Society is on the Martian surface with our Scout concept. On 25 May 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lander landed safely in the northern arctic plains near the Martian North Pole. The Phoenix Scout Mission was selected by NASA as the first mission to be flown as part of the Mars Scout Program, a highly competitive program allowing varied entities based within industry, academia, and government to propose missions and vie for sponsorship based on relative merit in science, cost, and risk. Contributions to the Phoenix Scout Mission come from Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.

Under the name "Mars Discovery," this program was first proposed by the Mars Society at our 1998 Founding Convention as a principal way to augment the robotic Mars Exploration Program with an assortment of highly creative concepts from across the scientific community. NASA instituted the concept in 2000. Subsequently, a competition was held, and Phoenix was selected from a field of more than 30 concepts in competition in 2003.

As of 10 November 2008, after operating for more than five months, the spacecraft's work has ended. The lander has ceased communications, and the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages. Phoenix searched for evidence to help solve the puzzle of past or present Martian life. On 31 July 2008, the spacecraft confirmed Martian water in a soil sample through laboratory tests aboard the lander. Its robotic arm delivered the soil sample to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by heating the samples. The mission is now extended for an additional five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission. Why water?