NASA will post online nine names that are finalists for the agency’s Mars Science Laboratory mission and invite the public to vote for its favorite. The non-binding poll to help NASA select a name opens online Monday, March 23, and will accept votes through March 29.

More than 9,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grades submitted essays proposing names for the rover in a nationwide contest that ended Jan. 25. Entries came from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the families of American service personnel overseas. NASA will select the winning name, based on a student’s essay and the public poll, and announce the name in April.

“The names that students proposed range from heroes to animals and bugs,” said Michelle Viotti, manager of the Mars Public Engagement program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, in Pasadena, Calif. “No matter what name is finally chosen, this is a mission for everyone, and we can’t wait to start calling this rover by name.”

The student who submitted the winning name will be invited to JPL to sign the rover. Additionally, all 30 student semi-finalists in the naming contest will have an opportunity to place an individually-tailored message on the chip. For worldwide participation beyond the contest, the public has a chance to participate in “Send Your Name to Mars.” The agency will collect names to be recorded on a microchip that will be carried on the car-sized robotic explorer. Names will be collected via the contest web link beginning Monday.

The naming contest is part of a Space Act Agreement between NASA and Disney. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is the prize provider for the contest. This collaboration made it possible for WALL-E, the animated robotic hero from the 2008 movie of the same name, to appear in online content inviting students to participate.

Scheduled to launch in 2011 and land on Mars in 2012, the rover will use a set of advanced science instruments to check whether the environment in a selected landing region ever has been favorable for supporting microbial life and preserving evidence of such life. The rover also will search for minerals that formed in the presence of water and look for chemical building blocks of life.

JPL manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To view the nine finalist names and cast your vote, visit: http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov.

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot’s arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander’s instruments.

Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.

The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft’s work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages.

“Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I’m confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet’s soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix’s cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth.

“Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Phoenix’s preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.

Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

“Phoenix provided an important step to spur the hope that we can show Mars was once habitable and possibly supported life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Phoenix was supported by orbiting NASA spacecraft providing communications relay while producing their own fascinating science. With the upcoming launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, the Mars Program never sleeps.”

The University of Arizona leads the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver. 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.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.

“Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday’s sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.

“Mars is giving us some surprises,” said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. “We’re excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we’ve done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we’re finding ways to work with it and we’re gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil.”

Since landing on May 25, Phoenix has been studying soil with a chemistry lab, TEGA, a microscope, a conductivity probe and cameras. Besides confirming the 2002 finding from orbit of water ice near the surface and deciphering the newly observed stickiness, the science team is trying to determine whether the water ice ever thaws enough to be available for biology and if carbon-containing chemicals and other raw materials for life are present.

The mission is examining the sky as well as the ground. A Canadian instrument is using a laser beam to study dust and clouds overhead.

“It’s a 30-watt light bulb giving us a laser show on Mars,” said Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency.

A full-circle, color panorama of Phoenix’s surroundings also has been completed by the spacecraft.

“The details and patterns we see in the ground show an ice-dominated terrain as far as the eye can see,” said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, lead scientist for Phoenix’s Surface Stereo Imager camera. “They help us plan measurements we’re making within reach of the robotic arm and interpret those measurements on a wider scale.”

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

TUCSON, Ariz. — NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander today made its first dig into Martian soil for science studies and is poised to deliver the scoopful to a laboratory instrument on the lander deck.

The instrument will bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as water.

Commands were received by Phoenix Friday, June 6, for the spacecraft’s Robotic Arm to dump the sample into an opened door on the instrument called the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA.

“It’s looks like a good sample for us,” said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Over the next few days, and it may be as much as a week, the TEGA instrument will be analyzing this sample.”

Phoenix’s Robotic Arm collected the sample of clumpy, reddish material from the top 2 to 4 centimeters (0.8 to 1.6 inches) of surface material at a site informally named “Baby Bear” on the north side of the lander. In the past week, engineers had used the arm to collect two practice scoops adjacent to Baby Bear and dump those scoopfuls back onto the surface. They have prepared for years with simulations and versions of the arm on Earth.

“It’s like being on a football team and having a pre-season that lasted five years, and now we’re finally playing first game,” said Matt Robinson, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is the robotic arm flight software lead for the Phoenix team.

The move was calculated to get enough material to be sure to get some delivered into the instrument without inundating the instrument with unnecessary extra soil. “We’re ecstatic that we got a quarter to a third of a scoopful,” Robinson said.

The TEGA instrument will begin analyzing the sample for water and mineral content after it has analyzed a sample of the Martian atmosphere. Water can be bound to minerals, such as clays or carbonates, and it takes more heat to drive the water off some minerals than others. This is how the instrument can identify some minerals in the soil.

“We are particularly interested in minerals that are formed or altered by the action of liquid water in the soil,” Smith said.

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

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

“For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars,” Griffin said. “I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement.”

During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft’s cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries provide electricity until the lander’s own pair of solar arrays spread open.

“We’ve passed the hardest part and we’re breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power,” said JPL’s Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager. If all goes well, engineers will learn the status of the solar arrays between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time (10 and 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time) from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter.

The team will also be watching for the Sunday night transmission to confirm that masts for the stereo camera and the weather station have swung to their vertical positions.

“What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft,” said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. “I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our mission.”

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

NASA EXTENDS OPERATIONS FOR ITS LONG-LIVED MARS ROVERS

WASHINGTON - NASA has extended, for a fifth time, the activities of the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The decision keeps the trailblazing mobile robotic pioneers active on opposite sides of Mars, possibly through 2009. This extended mission and the associated science are dependent upon the continued productivity and operability of the rovers.

“We are extremely happy to be able to further the exploration of Mars. The rovers are amazing machines, and they continue to produce amazing scientific results operating far beyond their design life,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

The twin rovers landed on Mars in January 2004, 45 months ago, on missions originally planned to last 90 days. In September, Opportunity began descending into Victoria Crater in Mars’ Meridiani Planum region. At approximately a half mile wide and 230 feet deep, it is the largest crater the rover has visited. Spirit climbed onto a volcanic plateau in a range of hills that were on the distant horizon from the landing site.

“After more than three-and-a-half years, Spirit and Opportunity are showing some signs of aging, but they are in good health and capable of conducting great science,” said John Callas, rover project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The rovers each carry a suite of sophisticated instruments to examine the geology of Mars for information about past environmental conditions. Opportunity has returned dramatic evidence that its area of Mars stayed wet for an extended period of time long ago, with conditions that could have been suitable for sustaining microbial life. Spirit has found evidence in the region it is exploring that water in some form has altered the mineral composition of some soils and rocks.

To date, Spirit has driven 4.51 miles and has returned more than 102,000 images. Opportunity has driven 7.19 miles and has returned more than 94,000 images.

Among the rovers’ many other accomplishments:

• Opportunity has analyzed a series of exposed rock layers recording how environmental conditions changed during the times when the layers were deposited and later modified. Wind-blown dunes came and went. The water table fluctuated.
• Spirit has recorded dust devils forming and moving. The images were made into movie clips, providing new insight into the interaction of Mars’ atmosphere and surface.
• Both rovers have found metallic meteorites on Mars. Opportunity discovered one rock with a composition similar to a meteorite that reached Earth from Mars.

JPL manages the rovers for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

NASA

PASADENA, Calif. — Two months after sky-darkening dust from severe storms nearly killed NASA’s Mars exploration rovers, the solar-powered robots are awake and ready to continue their mission. Opportunity’s planned descent into the giant Victoria Crater was delayed, but now the rover is preparing to drive into the half-mile diameter crater as early as Sept. 11.

Spirit, Opportunity’s rover twin, also survived the global dust storm. The rovers are 43 months into missions originally planned to last three months. On Sept. 5, Spirit climbed onto its long-term destination called Home Plate, a plateau of layered bedrock bearing clues to an explosive mixture of lava and water.

“These rovers are tough. They faced dusty winds, power starvation and other challenges — and survived. Now they are back to doing groundbreaking field work on Mars. These spacecraft are amazing,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Victoria Crater contains an exposed layer of bright rocks that may preserve evidence of interaction between the Martian atmosphere and surface from millions of years ago, when the atmosphere might have been different from today’s. Victoria is the biggest crater Opportunity has visited.

Martian dust storms in July blocked so much sunlight that researchers grew concerned the rovers’ daily energy supplies could plunge too low for survival. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., put Opportunity onto a very low-energy regimen of no movement, few observations and reduced communication with Earth. Skies above both rovers remain dusty but have been clearing gradually since early August.

Dust from the sky has been falling onto both rovers’ solar panels, impeding their ability to collect energy from the sun. However, beneficial wind gusts removed some of the new buildup from Opportunity almost as soon as it accumulated.

Opportunity drove to the lip of Victoria Crater in late August and examined possible entry routes. This week, Opportunity has been driving about 130 feet toward its planned entry point. The route will provide better access to a top priority target inside the crater: a bright band of rocks about 40 feet from the rim. “We chose a point that gives us a straight path down, instead of driving cross-slope from our current location,” said Paolo Bellutta, a JPL rover driver plotting the route. “The rock surface on which Opportunity will be driving will provide good traction and control of its path into the crater.”

For its first foray into the crater, Opportunity will drive just far enough to get all six wheels in; it will then back out and assess slippage on the inner slope. “Opportunity might be ready for that first ‘toe dip’ into the crater as early as next week,” said JPL’s John Callas, rover project manager. “In addition to the drives to get to the entry point, we still need to conduct checkouts of two of Opportunity’s instruments before sending the rover into the crater.”

The rover team plans to assess if dust has impaired use of the microscopic imager. If that tool is working, the team will use it to observe whether a scanning mirror for the miniature thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES) can function accurately. This mirror is high on the rover’s camera mast. It reflects infrared light from the landscape to the spectrometer at the base of the mast, and it also can be positioned to close the hole in the mast as protection from dust. The last time the spectrometer was used, some aspects of the data suggested the instrument may have been viewing the inside of the mast instead of the Martian landscape.

“If the dust cover or mirror is no longer moving properly, we may have lost the ability to use that instrument on Opportunity,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers’ science instruments. “It would be the first permanent loss of an instrument on either rover. But we’ll see.”

The instrument already has provided extensive valuable information about rocks and soils in the Meridiani region where Opportunity works. “Mini-TES has told us a lot about the rocks and soils at Meridiani, but we’ve learned that the differences among Meridiani rocks are often too subtle for it to distinguish,” Squyres said. “The same instrument on Spirit, at Gusev Crater, has a much more crucial role for us at this point in the mission because there is such diversity at Gusev.” Researchers will rely heavily on a different type of instrument, Opportunity’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, for analysis of rocks at the bright-band target layer in the crater.

NASA

The Phoenix spacecraft got off it’s Florida launch pad early this morning. The Mars lander has since separated from the Delta II rocket and ground controllers at NASA’s Deep Space Network have acquired its signal and begun assessing its health. The solar panels that will power the mission’s cruise phase will be deployed and Phoenix will be pointed to best receive solar power and communicate with Earth.

Perched atop a Delta II rocket, the spacecraft left Cape Canaveral Air Force Base at 5:26 a.m. EDT into the predawn sky above Florida’s Atlantic coast. The spacecraft since has oriented itself to the sun as it was programmed to do. It will use solar panels to generate electricity during the nine-month coast to Mars. A separate set of solar arrays is attached to the lander itself.

Phoenix is aiming for a May 25, 2008, arrival at the Red Planet and a close-up examination of the surface of the northern polar region.

The Phoenix Mars lander’s assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.

“Today’s launch is the first step in the long journey to the surface of Mars. We certainly are excited about launching, but we still are concerned about our actual landing, the most difficult step of this mission,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson.

“The launch team did a spectacular job getting us on the way.” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Our trajectory is still being evaluated in detail; however we are well within expected limits for a successful journey to the red planet. We are all thrilled!”

Phoenix will be the first mission to touch water-ice on Mars. Its robotic arm will dig to an icy layer believed to lie just beneath the surface. The mission will study the history of the water in the ice, monitor weather of the polar region, and investigate whether the subsurface environment in the far-northern plains of Mars has ever been favorable for sustaining microbial life.

“Water is central to every type of study we will conduct on Mars,” Smith said.

The Phoenix Mars Mission is the first of NASA’s competitively proposed and selected Mars Scout missions, supplementing the agency’s core Mars Exploration Program, whose theme is “follow the water.” The University of Arizona was selected to lead the mission in August 2003 and is the first public university to lead a Mars exploration mission.

Phoenix uses the main body of a lander originally made for a 2001 mission that was cancelled before launch. “During the past year we have run Phoenix through a rigorous testing regimen,” said Ed Sedivy, Phoenix spacecraft program manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, which built the spacecraft. “The testing approach runs the spacecraft and integrated instruments through actual mission sequences, allowing us to asses the entire system through the life of the mission while here on Earth.”

Samples of soil and ice collected by the lander’s robotic arm will be analyzed by instruments mounted on the deck. One key instrument will check for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are given off. Another will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the dissolution products. Cameras and microscopes will provide information on scales spanning 10 powers of 10, from features that could fit by the hundreds into a period at the end of a sentence to an aerial view taken during descent. A weather station will provide information about atmospheric processes in the arctic region.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. The NASA Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center and the United Launch Alliance are responsible for the Delta II launch service. International contributions are provided by the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), the Max Planck Institute (Germany) and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Additional information on Phoenix is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix.

Additional information on NASA’s Mars program is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars.

The launch of a Delta rocket carrying the Phoenix lander to Mars has been pushed back 24 hours to early Saturday morning because of weather concerns at the Kennedy Space Center, agency officials announced today.

Phoenix is scheduled to land at Mars’ north pole to undertake a science mission looking for organic materials that would be requisite for life to have been present on Earth’s closest neighbor.

Phoenix is poised to begin its mission as twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity are battling to survive a severe wind storm that has obscured sun light so severely that the rovers’ solar panels can scarcely collect enough light to keep heaters going long enough to prevent over-night freeIng of the probes.

Spirit and Opportunity, designed to operate for 90 days, are now in the fourth year of their mission.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — known simply as MRO — successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral this morning following two separate 24-hour delays.

The spacecraft launched aboard NASA’s first Atlas V rocket and liftoff comes with the space agency enjoying renewed public interest. MRO’s journey begins the same week that Discovery completed its return-to-flight mission.

The MRO spacecraft now begins its journey to Mars. Its “cruise phase” to the planet takes 7 months, followed by 6 months spent refining its orbit using a technique known as “aerobraking.” During the initial cruise phase, controllers plan to test the satellite’s instruments and begin preparations to slow it using the atmosphere of Mars.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s mission is to see if long-standing bodies of water ever existed on the planet. While missions like the Mars Exploration Rovers have shown that water once flowed across the planet’s surface, scientists are yet to determine if it was around long enough to provide a habitat for life.