Talk:Phoenix (spacecraft)

Price/cost of the mission
I think the cost estimate of the mission should be added to the web page. I found in http://www.aerospaceguide.net/mars/phoenixlander.html that "The cost of the Phoenix mission is $386 million, which includes the launch.". Can anybody confirm this cost estimate? Yebbey (talk) 13:47, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the NASA official website (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-060205.html) gives this information. I have added it to the article. --EngineeringGuy (talk) 08:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The Aug 2007 press kit says $420 M, all in. I've added it to the intro. - Rod57 (talk) 11:12, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion to add mission patch
The patch is located here: []. It would be best for consistency with other missions to include this as well. Being a publicly funded project, the patch is of course in the public domain as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xession (talk • contribs) 00:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

"Triumph" mention removed
Removed this from the "end of mission" section:


 * Immediately prior, Phoenix sent its final message: "Triumph" in binary code.

The reference is simply the message in the Phoenix twitter feed, not any kind of official claim that the lander itself sent the message. Any news articles I found also only state that this was in the twitter feed and do not state it was sent by the lander. The tweet itself is not particularly interesting, so I've removed the line. If anyone can find credible evidence that Phoenix itself sent the message it can be replaced.
 * AFAIK - the following reference seems to be a sufficiently reliable citation supporting the claim - and has been added to the main article => < ref name="WRD-20081110"> - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 18:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)


 * This article also shows it's only from the spacecraft Twitter page so I have removed the line again. Joedetode (talk) 19:20, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Phoenix lander technology reused in InSight
Current InSight mission reuse technology from the Mars Phoenix lander. I think that this information should be included in some "legacy" section of Phoenix article. -- Adam Hauner (talk) 18:12, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. A one-liner near the bottom would sufice. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 18:20, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Massive duplication
I noticed that there is massive duplication of information within the sections entitled "Surface mission", "Results", and "Scientific payload". I will be overhauling those sections soon, and moving/deleting info as needed. I will keep all references. BatteryIncluded (talk) 03:41, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I just finished the overhaul. Mostly, I moved the results peppered everywhere back into the Results section; deleted duplications but I kept the references. There was a big deal regarding the detection of perchlorides, so I moved those results there and expanded it some. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 01:40, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Edit Request : Die-sized
In the section "Presence of shallow subsurface water ice" one of the photos has the caption which describes the ice as "Die-sized clumps". Wow. I've seen dies of lengths of over one meter and I suspect dies can be millimeters and possibly even microns or smaller in the context of nano devices. Bracketing the "clumps" sizes as being between several meters and tens or hundreds of nanometers is useless - we can tell from the photo (and common sense) that the "clumps" are less than a decimeter in size. Here's an idea: why not, just for the heck of it use the SI unit? It is called a "metre" or in the USA a "meter". The system is used both internally at NASA and in most academic institutions world-wide. I mention that because apparently the editor is unaware of such technicalities. Anyway, I am requesting an edit to that caption and strongly suggest that actual standard units of length be used.71.31.149.188 (talk) 01:30, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I assume it is a typo, meant to say "dice". Deleted anyway. Thanks. BatteryIncluded (talk) 02:08, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Evaluation of objectives achieved
It would be nice to list the mission objectives - and later say how well they were achieved ? What use was made of the 8 TEGA ovens ? What results from the TECP (in soil, and air)? and from the microscope ? The press kit says "Phoenix will dig down to the icy layer." (It was designed to dig 50 cm below the surface). How deep did it dig ? - Rod57 (talk) 11:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Presskit and component deck
The presskit seems a rich but underused source. On p31 it shows a Component deck inside the aeroshell. Is that fixed into the lander ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:33, 12 July 2020 (UTC)