The spacecraft Phoenix landed safely on Mars on Sunday, making a hazardous soft landing on the planet’s far north with all its scientific systems apparently intact and ready to begin an intensive new search for life beyond Earth.
After counting down the last stage of the descent by hundreds and then tens of nerve-wracking meters, officials at mission control in Pasadena, Calif., announced that “Phoenix has landed,” setting off a joyous celebration by the mission team.
“It could not have gone better, not in my dreams,” said Barry Goldstein, NASA’s project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
The touchdown, around 8 p.m. EDT, was the first successful soft landing on the Red Planet — using a parachute and thrusters rather than protective airbags — since the twin Viking missions in 1976. In all, six of 11 similar attempts by the United States, Russia and England ended in failure, so the Phoenix team awaited the outcome of the spacecraft’s approach and landing with enormous apprehension.
Phoenix plunged into the thin Martian atmosphere traveling at more than 12,000 mph. Over the next seven minutes, friction — which raised the temperature on the heat shield to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit — slowed it enough to deploy the parachute.
About half a mile from the surface, and with only seconds remaining before touching down, 12 small rocket thrusters fired to slow the lander’s descent speed to 5 mph. Before it landed, however, Phoenix had to orient itself toward the sun to ensure that its solar panels could pick up enough light to generate power it will need on the surface.
Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, lead investigator for the mission, earlier said the entry would amount to “seven minutes of terror” for the scientists.
