Phoenix Lowered into Thermal Vacuum Chamber
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander was lowered into a thermal vacuum chamber at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, in December 2006.
The spacecraft was folded in its aeroshell and underwent environmental testing that simulated the extreme conditions the spacecraft will see during its nine-and-a-half-month cruise to Mars.
The Phoenix mission is led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership with Lockheed Martin Space Systems. International contributions for Phoenix are provided by the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), the University of Copenhagen, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
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