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SpatialNews.com Press Release
ESRI France Participates in Phoenix Mars Landing Event
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Redlands, CA - On May 25, 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lander successfully touched down on Mars, giving the world a fresh glimpse of the Red Planet's polar region. ESRI participated in an event to celebrate this historic craft on the inaugural day of its mission.
Hundreds gathered in the auditorium of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris, France, to hear narration of the phases of descent in real time. ESRI was invited to display images of the landing area, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor since 1997, with ArcGIS Explorer. ArcGIS Explorer displayed the images in 3D, which gave the audience a clearer understanding of why the Phoenix Lander team chose the site.
ESRI France participated in the event because ESRI ArcGIS Explorer can import geodata, including data about other planets and moons, and view it in 3D. These photorealistic displays engaged the audience by showing the exact perspective of the probe as it descended. During the event, Gilles Dawidowicz, planetary scientist, French Astronomical Society, described the imagery and its importance to Martian mission planning.
"Phoenix is a wonderful space mission, as it will be the first time we will 'touch' Martian water," says Dawidowicz. "That's probably why people are so fascinated by this lander. Water is an essential prerequisite for life and will play a key role in manned expeditions to Mars."
The Phoenix Mars Lander's primary mission is to research the history of water on Mars.
For more information on ArcGIS Explorer, visit www.esri.com/arcgisexplorer.
About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit www.esri.com.
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