Mars Pulls Phoenix In

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu

News Release: 2008-080 May 25, 2008

Mars Pulls Phoenix In

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander sped on Sunday morning toward its arrival
at Mars, as the tug of the Red Planet's gravity accelerated the craft during the final day of its trip
from Earth to Mars.

"Mars is literally pulling on our spacecraft, and at the same time it is pulling on our emotions,"
Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said early
Sunday afternoon. "We are excited at how close we are right now to beginning our study of a site
where Martian water ice will be within our reach, after all these years of preparations. Our
science mission begins as the spacecraft settles into its new home on Mars."

The spacecraft's speed relative to Mars increased from 6,300 miles per hour at 8:30 a.m. Pacific
Time to 8,500 mph at 12:30 p.m., headed for a speed higher than 12,000 mph before reaching the
top of the Martian atmosphere.

Phoenix was on track for anticipated entry into the atmosphere at 4:30p.m. Pacific Time and
reaching the surface at 4:38 p.m., although confirmation of those events comes no sooner than 15
minutes, 20 seconds later, due to the time needed for radio signals to travel from Mars to Earth.

Mission controllers decided Saturday night and Sunday morning to forgo the last two
opportunities for adjusting the spacecraft's trajectory.

"We are so well on course that those adjustments were not necessary," said Phoenix Project
Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The most challenging part of the entire mission, getting from the top of the atmosphere to a safe
landing on three legs, still lies ahead. Internationally, only five of the 11 attempts to land a
spacecraft on Mars have succeeded.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at JPL. The development
partnership is with Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions are from the Canadian
Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and
Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

For more about the Phoenix mission on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .

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