This Day, That Year – August 4

This day in history we feature NASA’s Phoenix. It was an uncrewed space probe launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on this day in 2007.

Trivia – NASA’s Phoenix

Phoenix was NASA’s sixth successful landing on Mars, from seven attempts, and the first in Mars’ polar region. The mission had two goals. One was to study the geological history of water, the key to unlocking the story of past climate change. The second was to evaluate past or potential planetary habitability in the ice-soil boundary. Phoenix’s instruments were suitable for uncovering information on the geological and possibly biological history of the Martian Arctic. Phoenix was the first mission to return data from either of the poles, and contributed to NASA’s main strategy for Mars exploration, “Follow the water.”

Related read – Tide gives NASA a hand to clean dirty laundry in space.

The lander completed its mission in August 2008, and made a last brief communication with Earth on November 2 as available solar power dropped with the Martian winter. The mission was declared concluded on November 10, 2008, after engineers were unable to re-contact the craft. After unsuccessful attempts to contact the lander by the Mars Odyssey orbiter up to and past the Martian summer solstice on May 12, 2010, JPL declared the lander to be dead. The program was considered a success because it completed all planned science experiments and observations.

Source – Wikipedia

This day in history – NASA’s Phoenix