The Phoenix mission to Mars

Like the bird of ancient mythology, the Phoenix mission is reborn out of fire; a new mission is born from the embers of previous missions. Phoenix returns to flight the Mars Surveyor Program's 2001 (MSP'01) lander that was mothballed in 2000; at that time, the project was 25% through its final test period. In addition, a diverse scientific payload has been chosen from the instruments from the Mars Polar Lander and the MSP'01 missions. This complement of spacecraft and payload will perform a scientific analysis of the Martian arctic soils and weather to unravel the history of water in all its phases and assess the potential for biology.