The May 25th entry into Mars’ atmosphere by the Phoenix lander may be under the watchful lens of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The MRO project has been investigating the possibility of imaging the Phoenix Mars lander during its entry, descent and landing period - as the probe plunges toward the red planet’s arctic region.

MRO would use its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) gear in attempting to catch the Phoenix in action as it high-dives to its touchdown site.

“The attempt requires that Phoenix be in the HiRISE field of view at the very moment that it temporarily crosses Phoenix’s path,” James Erickson, MRO Project Manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory told me.

Erickson made it clear, however, that the degree of difficulty in such sharp-shooting is very high. “We currently believe the probability of acquiring this image is no better than 20 percent or so,” he explained.

Furthermore, MRO’s first priority, Erickson noted, is recording the UHF signal from Phoenix during entry, descent and landing. “We need to make sure that attempting the HiRISE image does not interfere with that,” he added.

A go/no-go decision on whether to try for the MRO image needs to be made later this week, Erickson said.

Meanwhile, down on the planet Mars - what about those two still on-duty rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Could they enjoy a view of Phoenix plowing through the atmosphere?

While not an expert on the Phoenix entry trajectory details, rover camera wizard, Jim Bell of Cornell University brought up some good points.

“I think it will be essentially impossible for the rovers to play any role in watching the Phoenix landing,” Bell advised. For Opportunity, it will be in the middle of the night and the rover’s power is too low to do any night-time observations, he explained.

For the Spirit rover, it’ll be broad daylight when Phoenix nose-dives its way through the atmosphere. “So there won’t be any way to see any ‘pyrotechnics’ — like the heat shield ablation — against the daytime sky. Too bad,” Bell added.

“All of us on the rover team will be ‘watching’ in our minds, though,” Bell said, “since many of us have gone through this kind of gut-wrenching exercise a number of times before…go Phoenix!”

By the way, Phoenix made a planned Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM-5) last weekend, a May 17 burn of onboard thrusters that lasted 1.4 seconds.