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Mission to Mars

The Phoenix Mars lander will touchdown on Mars' Arctic Plain on 26 May 2008, after a ten month voyage from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. It left on 4 August 2007, aboard a Delta II rocket on its 274 million km journey.

Landing on the red planet is a complex process that requires Phoenix to slow down from 19,000kph to zero in just seven minutes. The landing is scheduled for 11.50am NZ time.

The mission is part of NASA’s long-term Mars Exploration programme, which aims to determine whether there is or ever was life on the red planet, and to explore the climate and geology of Mars in preparation for a possible human exploration in the future.

The Phoenix Mission is designed to support NASA’s work by studying the history of water in the Martian arctic, the biological potential of the soil and searching for any evidence of a habitable region on the planet’s surface.

We recommend:

Our Internet Gateway recommends:

Main Phoenix lander page at NASA

This is the main page for lander news - check out the live feeds, podcasts, video tours and more.

Phoenix Mars Mission

Peter Smith of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory serves as Phoenix's lead scientist.

NASA's Mars exploration page

Missions to Mars

Details past, present and future missions to Mars. Includes illustrations of craft, photographic results, fact sheets. From NASA.

Mars for Kids

Mars Themed games, activities and information for children.From NASA.

Planetary Photojournal

View the latest images from Mars and other planets. From NASA.

Google Mars

A shaded relief map color-coded by altitude using Google Maps interface.

More Mars web sites

From our Internet gateway.

Search our catalogue for

• items about Mars in our collection
• fiction about Mars - including the multi-award winning series by Kim Stanley Robinson
• children's stories about Mars