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Interplanetary networking: ESA’s Mars Express will keep an eye on NASA’s Phoenix

1 August 2007

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An artist's impression of Mars Express. The spacecraft left Earth for Mars on 2 June 2003. It reached its destination after a six-month journey, and has been investigating the planet since early 2004.

Credits: ESA - D. Ducros

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NASA’s Martian lander, Phoenix, is scheduled to be launched on 3 August this year and is expected to land on the Red Planet in the spring of 2008. The mission will investigate the Martian environment and will look beneath the frigid, arctic landscape in search of conditions favourable to past or present life.

Credits: NASA/JPL (C.Waste)

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In this artist’s impression of Phoenix on the Martian surface, the lander is shown digging a trench through the upper layer of the soil. The polar water ice cap is shown in the far distance.

Credits: NASA/JPL (C.Waste)

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