Mars Landing!!!

[gus danger]

May 26, 2008
NASA Spacecraft Appears to Have Landed on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. ? ? NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft appears to have made a safe landing on Mars.

Just before 8 p.m. Eastern time, mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here received a radio signal from the Phoenix on the ground in the icy plains north of Mars' Arctic circle.

Because the signal was relayed via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the controllers would have to wait another couple of hours, until Odyssey's next pass over the landing site, for additional word of the Phoenix's condition, including whether it had successfully unfolded its solar panels and possibly the first photographs.

If all is operating properly, the next few days will be spent checking out the instruments aboard the lander. Then, it will begin the first upclose investigation of Mars' north polar regions. That area became a prime area of interest for planetary scientists after NASA's orbiting Odyssey spacecraft discovered in 2002 vast quantities of water ice lying a few inches beneath the surface in Mars' polar regions.

All of Mars' surface is currently far too cold for life to exist, but in the past, Mars' axis may have periodically tipped over so that its north pole pointed at the sun during summer. That conceivably could have warmed the ice into liquid water.

With liquid water comes the possibility of life.

On Phoenix, a robotic arm with a scoop at the end will dig into the permafrost terrain into the ice. Instruments on the spacecraft included a small oven that will heat the scooped-up dirt and ice to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Analyzing the vapors will provide information of the minerals, and that will, in turn, provide clues about whether the ice ever melted and whether this region was habitable for life.

"We see Phoenix as a stepping stone to future investigations of Mars," said Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, the principal investigator of the mission.

But Phoenix had to get to the surface first. Mission managers sent their last instructions to Phoenix around noon Eastern time on Sunday. From there, the spacecraft operated on autopilot all the way to the surface.

Barry Goldstein, the mission's project manager, said the management team decided against a small tweak of the trajectory to move away from a "a small, rather diffuse rock pile" within the targeted landing area. However, there was only a 1 percent of landing on the rock pile.

During the day on Sunday, the pull of Mars gravity accelerated the spacecraft from 6,300 miles per hour to 12,700 miles per hour when it entered the Martian atmosphere. The friction of the atmosphere slowed the craft down by 90 percent, then a parachute provided further drag. For the last kilometer down to the surface, 12 rocket engines slowed Phoenix to a velocity of 5 miles per hour as it bumped into the ground.

The landing had an extra measure of anxiety, because Phoenix has the same basic design as NASA's Mars Polar Lander, which crashed while landing near the south pole in 1999. The spacecraft was originally going to Mars' equatorial region as Mars Surveyor 2001, but when investigations of the Polar Lander failure turned up major flaws in the design, that mission was cancelled, and the almost complete Surveyor spacecraft was put into storage.

Dr. Smith then proposed using the body of Surveyor and resurrect it as Phoenix for a different mission. Extensive testing identified more than a dozen flaws in the lander design, and mission managers believed they fixed all of the known problems.

NASA is spending $420 million on the Phoenix mission, for testing and retrofitting the spacecraft, outfitting it with new instruments, launching and mission operations. The Canadian Space Agency contributed the $37 million for one of the instruments, a weather station. In addition, the development and construction of the original Surveyor 2001 spacecraft cost $100 million.
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I don't know about ya'all but I just swallowed my gum!

I love it when another giant step for mankind is taken!

Wish I still had the NASA channel.
I'll be following this story, one way or another, though!

More later!
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Gus

[SouthwestRanger]

Men of Earth, we of the planet Mars give you this warning.



Listen carefully and remember.

We have known your planet Earth since the first creature crawled out of the primeval slime of your seas to become man.

For millennia, we have followed your progress, for centuries, we have watched you, listened to your radio signals and learned your speech and your culture.

And now, you have invaded our home.

Technological adults, but spiritual and emotional infants. We kept you here deciding your fate. Had the lower forms of life of our planet destroyed you, we would not have interfered. But you survived.

Your civilization has not progressed beyond destruction, war and violence against yourselves and others.

Do as you will to your own and to your planet, but remember this warning - Do Not Return To Mars.

You will be permitted to leave for this sole purpose - Carry The Warning To Earth. Do Not Come Here.

We can and will destroy you, all life on your planet, if you do not heed us. You have seen us, been permitted to glimpse our world. Go now. Warn mankind not to return unbidden.

From the Classic Sci-Fi Movie ANGRY RED PLANET

[raintown boy]

I love finding out about space exploration. I even have a small telescope that I take out on clear nights (along with a glass of nice red wine) and look at the craters on the moon and, if the conditions are right, the rings of Saturn.

If they find life on Mars I hope it's nothing like the aliens in that old Rock Hudson mini-series 'The Martian Chronicles'. The Martians in that killed humans by feeding them poisoned chocolate pudding, which is really not what you want after travelling all that distance.

[SouthwestRanger]

Originally posted by raintown boy:
I love finding out about space exploration. I even have a small telescope that I take out on clear nights (along with a glass of nice red wine) and look at the craters on the moon and, if the conditions are right, the rings of Saturn.

If they find life on Mars I hope it's nothing like the aliens in that old Rock Hudson mini-series 'The Martian Chronicles'. The Martians in that killed humans by feeding them poisoned chocolate pudding, which is really not what you want after travelling all that distance.

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You are probably talking about MARS IS HEAVEN when a Rocket crew land and is greeted by all their Loved Ones who passed way and living in a Midwestern Town....

One Radio Adaptation feautred one crewman learning about the Martian's plans because he never knew his Grandparents since they were murdered at Auschwitz by the Nazi's !

[img]wink.gif[/img]

[gus danger]

There are a couple pictures from the Mars Lander here!

http://spicey-hot.blogspot.com/2008/...nix-probe.html

I want to see some better ones though!
[img]graemlins/snail.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/camera.gif[/img]
Gus

[Tard]

How 'bout this? Big enough? [img]wink.gif[/img]

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/2...nout_color.jpg

[Tard]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ph...archive_1.html

[gus danger]

Thanks Reved!
What a world!

Live long

& prosper!

[gus danger]

Ice on Mars is no surprise ...
... at least not to award-winning sci-fi writer and astrophysicist Gregory Benford ("Timescape," "If the Stars Are Gods," "The Sunborn").



When the UC Irvine professor and his (uncredited) coauthor, biologist Elisabeth Malartre, were researching their bestselling 1999 novel, "The Martian Race," they were "fairly certain" that ice eventually would be found on Mars, especially near the poles.

"Since 1999, NASA has found caves (large, identified from orbit) and plenty of signs of recent fluid flows down slopes, from momentary melting," Benford wrote in an e-mail after NASA announced that the substance uncovered by the Phoenix lander was most probably ice.

The before and after images -- of white stuff uncovered in a trench dug by Phoenix's robotic claw that disappears over a few days -- are spectacular in their simplicity. They underscore, for me at least, the Red Planet's grip on the human imagination. Why is that?

Maybe because it means we might not be alone in this vast universe. "Mars is the most Earthlike world we know -- and the best bet for finding life," says the prolific scientist. "A separate origin [of life] on Mars would greatly enhance odds that life is common in the universe."

While we wait for more news from that fourth stone from our sun, maybe cracking open some of those great books on Mars is in order. Benford's recommendations:

"The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must," by Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner. The 1996 book, Benford explains, "details how to go there soon, economically. The deep issue of Mars life -- its origin, survival to now, etc. -- simply can't be explored well in the foreseeable future by robots."

"Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World" is Oliver Morton's 2002 look at everything that is known about the planet, "a look at the culture of Mars fandom, among scientists and writers alike."

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy ("Red Mars," "Green Mars," Blue Mars") offers a "sweeping analysis of terraforming Mars over centuries, politically correct all the way," Benford says.

And of course, Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" -- "Still the founding text!" Benford exclaims.

The professor's own "The Martian Race" -- which resulted in a marriage between Malartre and Benford and may one day be made into a movie -- is "still selling nicely nine years later," proof, he says, that "Mars has appeal."

[E.]

does anyone here believe there might be other intelligent life in this universe? with me the jurys still out. [img]graemlins/snail.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/star.gif[/img]