New Views Show Old NASA Mars Landers

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

News feature: 2012-037 Feb. 8, 2012

New Views Show Old NASA Mars Landers

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-037&cid=release_2012-037

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image
from orbit showing the three-petal lander of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit mission. Spirit
drove off that lander platform in January 2004 and spent most of its six-year working life in a
range of hills about two miles to the east.

Another recent image from HiRISE, taken on Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA's Phoenix Mars
Lander and its surroundings on far-northern Mars after that spacecraft's second Martian arctic
winter. Phoenix exceeded its planned mission life in 2008, ending its work as solar energy
waned during approach of its first Mars winter.

The image showing Spirit's lander platform as a small, bright feature southwest of Bonneville
Crater is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA15038. The new image of Phoenix is
at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA15039 .

Previous color images from HiRISE have shown the Spirit rover itself, but all previous HiRISE
views of the lander that delivered Spirit were in black and white.

Although neither Phoenix nor Spirit still send data to Earth, scientific findings from both missions
continue as researchers analyze the wealth of data from the two. A recent report based on
inspection of Martian soil particles with microscopes on Phoenix concluded that the soil has
experienced very little interaction with liquid water over the past 600 million years or more (see
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_3-2-
2012-10-26-2 ).

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining Mars with six science instruments since
2006. Now in an extended mission, the orbiter continues to provide insights into the planet's
ancient environments and how processes such as wind, meteorite impacts and seasonal frosts
are continuing to affect the Martian surface today. This mission has returned more data about
Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined.

More than 21,000 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team's
website: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu . Each observation by this telescopic camera covers
several square miles, or square kilometers, and can reveal features as small as a desk.

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project
and the Mars Exploration Rover Project are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver,
built the orbiter. For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, see
www.nasa.gov/mro .

The University of Arizona led the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and
development partnership at Lockheed Martin. International contributions came from the
Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of
Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish
Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.

-end-

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