Phoenix to Land on Mars Sunday 4:53PM PDT

[onedomino]

The two US robots traversing Mars, Spirit and Opportunity, will be joined by Phoenix, Sunday, 4:53PM Pacific:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/20/science/mars533.jpg

US Probe to Make Perilous Landing on Martian Arctic

complete article: http://www.physorg.com/news130861701.html

After traveling 679 million kilometers (422 million miles) through the cosmos, on Sunday the probe will have that amount of time to decelerate from 21,000 kilometers per hour (13,000 miles per hour) to a mere float to manage a safe touchdown on the Red Planet's arctic region.

With the nearly five decades of Mars exploration fraught with failures -- about half of the three-dozen tries has crashed, disappeared or missed the planet altogether -- there is little room for error.

"This is not a trip to grandma's house. Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Given the long distance, the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which controls the mission, will have to wait an agonizing 15 minutes for the radio signal confirming the safe landing to reach Earth.

NASA's 420-million-dollar probe will become the first spacecraft to land on the Martian arctic surface, digging into the polar ice in a new three-month mission searching for signs of life on Mars .

Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at around 2331 GMT, use a thermal shield to slow its entry into the atmosphere and then deploy a parachute to reduce its speed.

It will then fire up its thrusters to slow to eight kph (five mph) and land on its three legs on the circumpolar region known as Vastitas Borealis -- akin to northern Canada in Earth's latitude.

"I'm sure as Sunday gets nearer, we'll start to get more and more nervous. We all understand that landing safely on Mars is one of the most challenging parts of our mission," Phoenix Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari said Thursday.

"We do believe that it's a risk worth taking," said Fuk Li, manager of NASA's Mars Exploration program, "because I think that the science the mission will return with will be outstanding and we will open up a new chapter on how we understand Mars to be."

One minute after Phoenix confirms arrival, its radio will go silent for 20 minutes to save its batteries before deploying its two solar antennas.

The first images from Phoenix will reach Earth two hours later.

 

[Gungnir]

I've got my fingers crossed.

On a side note, I love oriental names.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I've got my fingers crossed.

On a side note, I love oriental names.

Umm what Oriental names? All 3 are name with NON oriental names.

And it has to survive a landing that few of our attempts have survived.

 

[onedomino]

Umm what Oriental names? All 3 are name with NON oriental names.

And it has to survive a landing that few of our attempts have survived.

You are right about how perilous Martian landings can be. The Phoenix lander is in part a replacement for a failed north polar mission from a few years ago. So Phoenix is an appropriate name. From the crash of the first polar lander rises the new Phoenix... we hope.

 

[onedomino]

Phoenix is about 20 minutes from possible landing confirmation. Anyone interested can watch JPL Phoenix Mission Control live at this website: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

 

[onedomino]

"Phoenix has landed. Welcome to the northern plains of Mars!"

 

[Gunny]

The two US robots traversing Mars, Spirit and Opportunity, will be joined by Phoenix, Sunday, 4:53PM Pacific:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/20/science/mars533.jpg

It's on the D-SCI channel for those with Time Warner digital cable.

 

[Annie]

"Phoenix has landed. Welcome to the northern plains of Mars!"

This is seriously too cool!

 

[DeadCanDance]

What?! No Con outrage on wasteful government spending?

Why should taxpayers pay billions, so some probe can look at martian ice???

Where's the outrage? I could have sworn I read about 20 posts in the last week by cons, saying we should gut government spending. Trim it to the bare minimum, only the absolute essentials.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

What?! No Con outrage on wasteful government spending?

Why should taxpayers pay billions, so some probe can look at martian ice???

Where's the outrage? I could have sworn I read about 20 posts in the last week by cons, saying we should gut government spending. Trim it to the bare minimum, only the absolute essentials.

You are a retard, but then we all knew that already.

 

[Annie]

Some of the first pics and coverage of landing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/s...0f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

 

[Gunny]

What?! No Con outrage on wasteful government spending?

Why should taxpayers pay billions, so some probe can look at martian ice???

Where's the outrage? I could have sworn I read about 20 posts in the last week by cons, saying we should gut government spending. Trim it to the bare minimum, only the absolute essentials.

Do you have a point other than to partisan troll?

Cutting government spending would be nice. Whether or not space exploration is worth cost is definitely something worth discussing and/or investigating.

That makes this event no less cool than it is, nor space exploration no less interesting than it is.

 

[onedomino]

The 2009 Federal Budget will be about $3.1 trillion. Of that, we'll spend approximately $17 billion on space exploration... 0.55 percent. So for every dollar we spend, we allocate half a penny to space exploration. Humans are an exploring species. We do it because of the psychological imperative, and we do it because it makes economic sense. Maybe Spain should have spent the money it used to finance Magellan on the poor in Barcelona. But Spanish exploration of the World returned the value of investment many thousands of times. So it will be with our exploration of the solar system. We will receive new technology, resources, and ultimately living space. We are going to Mars and beyond. It is only a question of when.

 

[onedomino]

Phoenix assembly:

Photo: Lockheed Martin


Location of US robots on the surface of Mars:

Photo: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory


Artist's image of Phoenix at work:

Photo: Corby Waste/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory


Phoenix landing site up close:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/27/science/space/27nasa.600.jpg


An image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Phoenix spacecraft parachuting to Mars on Sunday:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/27/science/space/27nasa.2.lg.jpg

 

[DeadCanDance]

The 2009 Federal Budget will be about $3.1 trillion. Of that, we'll spend approximately $17 billion on space exploration... 0.55 percent. So for every dollar we spend, we allocate half a penny to space exploration. Humans are an exploring species. We do it because of the psychological imperative, and we do it because it makes economic sense. Maybe Spain should have spent the money it used to finance Magellan on the poor in Barcelona. But Spanish exploration of the World returned the value of investment many thousands of times. So it will be with our exploration of the solar system. We will receive new technology, resources, and ultimately living space. We are going to Mars and beyond. It is only a question of when.

That's my point. Conservatives love government spending, as long as it's on things they want: Iraq, Pentagon, Space program. Everyone has their own favorite pet spending programs.

17 Billion is a lot of money.

 

[onedomino]

That's my point. Conservatives love government spending, as long as it's on things they want: Iraq, Pentagon, Space program. Everyone has their own favorite pet spending programs.

17 Billion is a lot of money.

Your political comparison between Iraq and science funding is ludicrous. You have never let making sense get in the way of your posts.

 

[BrianH]

That's my point. Conservatives love government spending, as long as it's on things they want: Iraq, Pentagon, Space program. Everyone has their own favorite pet spending programs.

17 Billion is a lot of money.

Yeah, cause libs have never spent money on the space program....

You act as though the space program will be discontinued if a Democrat were elected....

Not to mention that it's possible for the cure to cancer to be in martian ice. (Not likely, but you never know.) We'll see how much you complain when there's a giant asteroid heading for earth and the "wasteful spending" of the space program saves us all.

 

[Diuretic]

Hey those pictures look like my back yard....wait a minute.....who put that crazy looking vehicle out the back of my place???

 

[onedomino]

It is hard to decide which is the more remarkable machine: Phoenix or the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time in history that a spacecraft has taken a photo of another spacecraft landing. See text below this amazing photo:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2008/details/cut/PSP_008579_9020_cut.jpg

In this sweeping view, the 10 kilometer-wide crater Heimdall lies on the north polar plains of Mars. But the bright spot highlighted in the inset is the Phoenix lander parachuting toward the surface. The amazing picture was captured on May 25th by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Though the lander looks like it might be dropping straight into Heimdall, it is really descending about 20 kilometers in front of the crater, in the foreground of the scene. The orbiter was 760 kilometers away from Phoenix when picture was taken, at an altitude of 310 kilometers. Subsequently the orbiter's camera was also able to image the lander on the surface.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/


And for an encore, MRO snaps a color photo of Phoenix on the Martian surface:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20080527a/20080527_PR_img_th371x246.jpg

 

[Chris]

If the Mars Lander finds life on Mars it will totally change the course of human history.