Phoenix - The First Mars Scout Mission

Abstract

As the first of the new Mars Scouts missions, the Phoenix project was selected by NASA in August of 2003. Four years later, almost to the day, Phoenix was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station and successfully injected into an interplanetary trajectory on its way to Mars. On May 25, 2008 Phoenix conducted the first successful powered decent on Mars in over 30 years. This paper will highlight some of the key changes since the 2008 IEEE paper of the same name, as well as performance through cruise, landing at the north pole of Mars and some of the preliminary results of the surface mission.