page_title: Mars landing
section_title: Phoenix
hierarchical_section_title: Mars landing / Uncrewed landings / Phoenix
caption_attribution_description: English: NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 10-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but correspond to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell. Phoenix deployed its parachute at an altitude of about 12.6 kilometers (7.8 miles) and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound. Given the position and pointing angle of MRO, Phoenix is at about 13 km above the surface, just a few seconds after the parachute opened. This image shows some details of the parachute, including the gap between upper and lower sections. At the time of this observation, MRO had an orbital altitude of 310 km, traveling at a ground velocity of 3.4 kilometers/second, and a distance of 760 km to the Phoenix lander. The HiRISE acquired this image on May 25, 2008, at 4:36 p.m. Pacific Time (7:36 p.m. Eastern Time). It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel. The NASA image has been altered by cropping, increasing the linear pixel density by a factor of two, and conversion from TIFF to JPG format.
context_page_description: A Mars landing is a landing of a spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Of multiple attempted Mars landings by robotic, unmanned spacecraft, ten have had successful soft landings. There have also been studies for a possible human mission to Mars, including a landing, but none have been attempted. The most recent landing took place on 26 November 2018 by the NASA probe InSight.
context_section_description: Phoenix launched on 4 August 2007, and touched down on the northern polar region of Mars on 25 May 2008. It is famous for having been successfully photographed while landing, since this was the first time one spacecraft captured the landing of another spacecraft onto a planetary body (the Moon not being a planet, but a satellite).
  Phoenix was followed by the Mars Science Laboratory, a rover more capable than Spirit and Opportunity. Originally the Mars Science Laboratory was intended for a launch during 2009 however, it was launched on 26 November 2011.
  Russia launched Fobos-Grunt, a sample return mission to Phobos, along with the joint Chinese Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter in November 2011, which went into Earth orbit successfully, but failed to launch to Mars.
caption: Camera on Mars orbiter snaps Phoenix suspended from its parachute during descent through Mars' atmosphere.
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