Mars lander Phoenix

There's probably dedicated hardware logic and software running parallel to that to tweak the descent event sequence timing.

The onboard autopilot either gets it right, and the hardware does its job, or the whole plan is SOL

Martian gravity is predicted to one hundred per cent
reliably bring about the landing at some touchdown velocity. So really it is only a matter of auto-finessing
a gentle meeting of landing pads and martian surface
via an intelligent throttling of the descent engine, so
that the desired low rendezvous velocity is achieved

Phoenix has soft landed on Mars.

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

During the entry there was no blackout from atmospheric heating. Telemetry was uninterrupted during the entire descent, relayed to Earth by the Mars Odyssey orbiter which was orbiting nearby overhead to the Phoenix lander. Odyssey is a still on station and functioning Mars orbiter from 2001.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/spotlight/20080523a.html

Image is Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech



[Edited on 25-5-2008 by Rosco Bodine]

All is well, the solar panels are deployed and pictures are coming in.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7



[Edited on 25-5-2008 by Rosco Bodine]

Very cool!
There almost seems to be some sort of regularity on the ground, hexagonal or pentagonal perhaps?
I wonder if they have landed on flood basalt - here on earth it sometimes leaves hexa/pentagonal columns, i.e. as in the Giants Causeway in Ireland, or on many locations in Iceland.
Olympus Mons and the other Tharsis volcanoes are way more towards the equator, so I don't know if this makes sense...

So close to the pole, I wonder whether the probe will get impeded by CO2 precipitation during the Mars winter.... from what I remember it appears during the winter and goes during the summer...


On the matter of water on Mars - check this on google Mars:

http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=28.574874&lon=-50.449218...

I really wonder what other process than water could cause such markings in the ground - this looks like canyon areas right from a plane!

Or look at this:
http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=11.135287&lon=-31.333007...

This looks like craters, that were leveled and flooded post impact - else why would their rims be leveled once intersecting with the flow valleys?

and this
http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=-8.363692&lon=-79.255371...

looks like what we see in any of earth canyons... this is infrared btw, and striations are inverted, light colours don't mean it's high but rather illumination (and heating) by the sun.


Fascinating! I wish more human energy was spent on this rather than stupid wars, weapons and similar. Peace


[Edited on 26-5-2008 by chemoleo]

Well Odyssey has been patiently waiting seven years for her mate to arrive. The first mission was only half successful, as
a little metric to english measurement conversion error put the first lander into a crater at high velocity instead of a soft landing ......oops I believe it is the same one I was thinking about, where the guys with the slide rules screwed the pooch and the soft landing turned into a spacecraft surface impact penetration depth experiment instead. After that faux pas, then funding got cut and the mission was cancelled. But the spare probe was reworked and launched (finally) to complete the mission, if I have the story right.

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/sm_140.jpg

[Edited on 25-5-2008 by Rosco Bodine]

Water on Mars? You betcha!

This crater is 22 miles (35 km) wide and is about 1.2 miles (2 km) deep. The circular patch of bright material located at the center of the crater is water ice that remains year round. Frost can also be seen along the rim of the crater. This unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars' far northern latitudes.

Crater Ice Pond
Photo credit: ESA
Date: 2006-08-22

Believe it or not, the engineers and scientists who designed the probe took this into account. The probe is indeed solar-powered; at its current latitude, the panels will produce about a kilowatt-hour per sol (Martian "day"), if I'm remembering correctly from last night's coverage. (A quick Google search isn't turning up the exact figure.)

The probe is not intended to work through the entire winter.

THat's a fascinating picture! Here's a high resolution pic taken from a perspective.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_41.jpg
Resolution: 15m per pixel
The crater is 35 km wide and 2 km deep (!)
What I'm surprised about is that they so clearly and casually state it is water ice - I always thought the big debate was whether surface ice existed?

See this, H2O as seen from the north pole, detected by gammarays:




If there's one crater with ice, there must be many - why can't they land somewhere where there is a huge patch of surface ice?

Btw here's the relation of the landing to other previous probes:


[Edited on 26-5-2008 by chemoleo]

water ice on Mars confirmed by Phoenix

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/06_20_pr.php

The red tinged shadow edges are probably an imaging artifact
or a shadow edge coloration from the red skylight, I'm not certain.
Anyway it appears they have found half the makings for a pot of tea there,
so the British interest should be at least fifty per cent in this off world discovery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBzeR0uFHaY&feature=relat...

[Edited on 20-6-2008 by Rosco Bodine]

What does that video have to do with anything?

I mean, she's pretty, but just a little big-boned

IMO, I think it would be more worth everyone's time and money to look for valuable minerals on Mars instead of life. Water is valuable outside of Earth. But now what?

We should be looking for sources of Pt, Pd, Au, Cu, Ni etc. so someday it will be profitable to mine these elements in space. All it will take for space exploration to explode is for it to be profitable. I think if we found a good chunk of Pt or Au it would most certainly be economically viable to invest in the technology needed for space-mining missions.

Hmmm....maybe H2O ? She is singing a psalm, speaking
of how the wind is the breath of God and the rain is His tears
and all that other beautiful poetic "gushing" kind of stuff
You must not be much of a romantic.
She is something of a spirit in flight too,
landing once in awhile to sing us a song,
so it seemed appropriate to me anyway.
Here's another sample from another admirer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wC9vq68yDQ&feature=relat...

Quote:

I mean, she's pretty, but just a little big-boned

She's fourteen years old there
and still carrying a lot of baby fat
But it looks like it is all developing nicely to me anyway.
Of course I like 'em with plenty of meat on their bones...
none of that anorexic stuff has quite the same "presence"
if you follow what I mean
I mean, it's like when when you buy a bowl of ice cream,
you do want to feel like you are not being jipped,
but are getting your money's worth....right?
Rubens would have turned somersaults to get this girl displayed on canvas
Big Beautiful Women, megababes, yeah that's the way I like 'em too

Its called a rail-gun, and would probably work rather nicely on Mars, given the low gravity and thin atmosphere. Even better from the ateroid belt. Stopping the stuff at the other end could be tricky, unless someone is clever enough to figure out how to sling a ton of rock into Earth orbit .. from Mars

<<
Its called a rail-gun, and would probably work rather nicely on Mars, given the low gravity and thin atmosphere. Even better from the ateroid belt. Stopping the stuff at the other end could be tricky, unless someone is clever enough to figure out how to sling a ton of rock into Earth orbit .. from Mars >>>


You're kidding me right?

You would wreck every single earth satellite doing that

Phoenix may be end of mission

Extreme cold and lowered light levels on the
photo-voltaics have depleted the batteries
and the lander has stopped responding to
ground commands

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/10_29_pr.php

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

Look Ma ......no solar panels What makes her go ?

Curiosity is a plutonium decay thermoelectric generator powered probe .....
and that should help to ward off those cold Martian winter chills

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JOPW8aAcgE New Mars Rover Powered By Plutonium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY_7d55vJko Clean Room Assembly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8p9YGovb_0 cumulative press release video

A not well known detail about the Spirit and Opportunity spaceframes, is there's an interesting story about those particular choices of Mars rover parts bearing an american flag as a makers mark for an alloy having special origin

September 08, 2011 JPL Press Release

Tributes to Terrorism Victims Are on Mars

Interplanetary Memorial to Victims of Sept. 11, 2001
The piece of metal with the American flag on it in this image of a NASA rover on Mars is made of aluminum recovered from the site of the World Trade Center towers in the weeks after their destruction.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University



In September 2001, Honeybee Robotics employees in lower Manhattan were building a pair of tools for grinding weathered rinds off rocks on Mars, so that scientific instruments on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity could inspect the rocks' interiors.

That month's attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, less than a mile away, shook the lives of the employees and millions of others.

Work on the rock abrasion tools needed to meet a tight schedule to allow thorough testing before launch dates governed by the motions of the planets. The people building the tools could not spend much time helping at shelters or in other ways to cope with the life-changing tragedy of Sept. 11. However, they did find a special way to pay tribute to the thousands of victims who perished in the attack.

An aluminum cuff serving as a cable shield on each of the rock abrasion tools on Mars was made from aluminum recovered from the destroyed World Trade Center towers. The metal bears the image of an American flag and fills a renewed purpose as part of solar system exploration.

Honeybee Robotics collaborated with the New York mayor's office; a metal-working shop in Round Rock, Texas; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; and the rover missions' science leader, Steve Squyres, at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

"It's gratifying knowing that a piece of the World Trade Center is up there on Mars. That shield on Mars, to me, contrasts the destructive nature of the attackers with the ingenuity and hopeful attitude of Americans," said Stephen Gorevan, Honeybee founder and chairman, and a member of the Mars rover science team.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Gorevan was six blocks from the World Trade Center, riding his bicycle to work, when he heard an airliner hit the first tower. "Mostly, what comes back to me even today is the sound of the engines before the first plane struck the tower. Just before crashing into the tower, I could hear the engines being revved up as if those behind the controls wanted to ensure the maximum destruction. I stopped and stared for a few minutes and realized I felt totally helpless, and I left the scene and went to my office nearby, where my colleagues told me a second plane had struck. We watched the rest of the sad events of that day from the roof of our facility."

At Honeybee's building on Elizabeth Street, as in the rest of the area, normal activities were put on hold for days, and the smell from the collapse of the towers persisted for weeks.

Steve Kondos, who was at the time a JPL engineer working closely with the Honeybee team, came up with the suggestion for including something on the rovers as an interplanetary memorial. JPL was building the rovers and managing the project.

To carry out the idea, an early hurdle was acquiring an appropriate piece of material from the World Trade Center site. Through Gorevan's contacts, a parcel was delivered to Honeybee Robotics from the mayor's office on Dec. 1, 2001, with a twisted plate of aluminum inside and a note: "Here is debris from Tower 1 and Tower 2."

Tom Myrick, an engineer at Honeybee, saw the possibility of machining the aluminum into the cable shields for the rock abrasion tools. He hand-delivered the material to the machine shop in Texas that was working on other components of the tools. When the shields were back in New York, he affixed an image of the American flag on each.

The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., on June 10, 2003. Opportunity's launch followed on July 7. Both rovers landed the following January and completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004. Nobody on the rover team or at Honeybee spoke publicly about the source of the aluminum on the cable shields until later that year.

"It was meant to be a quiet tribute," Gorevan told a New York Times reporter writing a November 2004 story about Manhattan's participation in the rover missions. "Enough time has passed. We want the families to know."

Since landing on the Red Planet, both rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit ended communications in March 2010. Opportunity is still active, and researchers plan to use its rock abrasion tool on selected targets around a large crater that the rover reached last month.

One day, both rovers will be silent. In the cold, dry environments where they have worked on Mars, the onboard memorials to victims of the Sept. 11 attack could remain in good condition for millions of years.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for NASA.

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20110908a.h...

[Edited on 11-3-2012 by Rosco Bodine]

This is becoming a serious risk, actually. The problem is that one collision produces multiple fragments, each of which can collide with another object, and so on, eventually resulting in completely unusuable orbits. This is already becoming a problem with the current density of satelites and debris, and some believe a critical density for this problem has already been reached.

In 1996 the french Cerise satelite was lost due to a collision with debris. In 1993, a 1 cm hole was found in an antenna of the hubble space telescope. The space shuttle has been hit multiple times, at least once producing a pit in one of the windows.

The debris travels so fast, even small pieces are dangerous. Much like a bullet. This, for instance, is the radiator from the space shuttle after a flight:

Quote: Originally posted by phlogiston

This is becoming a serious risk, actually. The problem is that one collision produces multiple fragments, each of which can collide with another object, and so on, eventually resulting in completely unusuable orbits. This is already becoming a problem with the current density of satelites and debris, and some believe a critical density for this problem has already been reached.

Success

Isn't posting about Curiosity on Phoenix thread off topic?

Here we have history repeating itself with another money shot by the Mars orbiter capturing an image of Curiosity hanging on its chute and the heat shield falling away below in the distance. Tell me those JPL boys aren't good

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie

This a great engineering achievement and will no doubt add to our understanding of Mars, our solar system, and cosmology in general. What bothers me is the media's obsession with trying to find out if there is, was, or ever could be life, or support for life, on Mars, or anywhere else for that matter. NASA also seems to pose that question as a major justification for space exploration. Why is the answer to that question so important? [Edited on 7-8-2012 by Magpie]

Quote: Originally posted by neptunium

finding life or traces of passed life would mean that life is not uncommon in the universe . if it could have appeared twice in one star system, then it must be everywhere in the cosmos, and is not a rare isolated event.

Quote: Originally posted by neptunium

also it allows scientist to understand why life has dissapear (or not ?) on mars and was succesful here . its the biggest bio chemistry anyone could hope for! It will tell us where to look for life and what to expect from its chemistry. DNA, compatibility etc..

Quote: Originally posted by neptunium

no matter what the answer to our questions may be , other suprises and question will arise! thats what so fascinating about science!

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie

Also there was speculation that we could be invaded by creatures from Mars, or that there could be enemies hiding on the back side of the moon.

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie

.... Life exists in some very harsh environments on earth, eg, miles down undersea, in undersea volcano vents, and in arctic areas. But I presume that these life forms were adaptations that spread from more temperate places. Finding life in the harsh environment of Mars would indeed be a surprise to me.

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

Lewis' argument is that evolution is a process of hundreds of millions or even a few billions of years. The speed of evolution and the starting point of evolution need not be the same as we had on Earth. So, if there is any intelligent life, then this intelligent life will either be millions of years ahead of us, or it will still be millions of years before it will appear. Lewis states that two intelligences only can interact over huge distances if they are sufficiently close in their technological development (e.g. both need to use radio waves for communication, they need to have similar interests in their environment and so on). A place, which even just is 100 years behind of us cannot be detected by us. A place, which is millions years ahead of us will be so far that their technology cannot be detected by us. Given the huge time spans (a few billions of years) needed for evolution of the first life forms to something intelligent and the short time (a few thousands of years) which it takes to develop technology like we have from a starting point where people just develop self-conscience, what can be expect from a technological development over millions of years? .

Quote: Originally posted by Fennel Ass Ih Tone

Roscoe, I see your point, but then it just disappears. But it was close to being %100 authentic. De-bunkers usually aren't after the truth, rather, they find a creative perspective, and just hammer it to death.

What point disappears ? Let me know and I'll try to fix that so it is sticky. Yeah I think you are right about radicals just wanting to manufacture bogus wedge issues to hammer, because they have a real feeling of exclusion for lack of something they can't identify and they probably resent it. So there follows a misdirection of blame towards others for causing an absence of the faith they deny themselves. It is classic displacement reaction blaming others for their not having what they are the only one can give themselves. It is a matter of the longing heart that got retasked to the head and isn't going anywhere because of the mind being the wrong tool for the job. There are "subjective truths" and things that are certainly observably and provably absolutely real as existing but at the same time are things which could never be "quantified" scientifically or mathematically. It requires some depth to grasp that. Science is like the curious child always asking why, and sometimes the only answer is that it simply is, and at some point the premise of the question why has been exceeeded by the scope of the reality being questioned, examined, or attempted to be measured, quantified, or explained. At that point the child must simply smile with wonder and say Oh! okay.

Hmmm ....wonder what kind of interesting find the Mars probe has made ...this should be interesting.