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[zard0z]

Will Phoenix survive its landing today on Mars? Phoenix's landing sequence will ramp up starting at about 7:30 pm EDT (23:30 UTC) today and last just over an hour. If all goes well, one of Phoenix's first images from Mars will appear on here tomorrow. The Phoenix Lander is programmed to set down near the North Pole of Mars, and, over the next three months, sample the Martian soil and ice and look for conditions conducive for ancient microbial life.

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

[Lethlweapn]

Looking forward to the new pictures from Mars.

[the nosh]

whenever i want some pics from mars i just give ziggy a call. he has tons of them.

[zard0z]

whenever i want some pics from mars i just give ziggy a call. he has tons of them.

I hear he played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly...

[zard0z]

This flat horizon stretches across the red planet as seen by the Phoenix spacecraft after yesterday's landing on Mars. Touching down shortly after 7:30pm Eastern Time, Phoenix made the first successful soft landing on Mars, using rockets to control its final speed, since the Viking landers in 1976. Launched in August of 2007, Phoenix has now made the northernmost landing and is intended to explore the Martian arctic's potentially ice-rich soil. The lander has returned images and data initially indicating that it is in excellent shape after a nearly flawless descent.

[Lethlweapn]

Looks like Iowa during planting season. LOL Thanks for the pic

[the nosh]

I hear he played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly...

you know him too zard??? 

[marilyn.monroe]

Looks like it did land safely! Cheerz! Dangerous place to land. I heard something like 50% of missions don't make it on the Red Planet.
pfc

[zard0z]

The Phoenix lander's footpads are about the size of a dinner plate. One of three is shown at the right, covered with Martian soil after a successful soft landing on the Red Planet on May 25. Amazingly, the left panel image is of the spacecraft during its descent phase, captured by the HiRISE camera onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter -- the first image ever of a spacecraft descending to the surface of another planet. Taken from 750 kilometers above Mars, the picture shows Phoenix suspended beneath its unfurling, 10 meter-wide parachute, against the much darker Martian surface. The lander is still attached to its protective backshell. Phoenix subsequently released its parachute at an altitude of 12.6 kilometers. Using rockets to further reduce its speed for landing, Phoenix now rests in the northern polar region of Mars at about 68 degrees latitude.

[zard0z]

OK, here's something real cool...This is a big picture, so it might take a minute to load in...The image shows 3 unusual features, which were not present in the earlier HiRISE image. You should be able to find 3 main pieces of hardware: the parachute attached to the backshell, the heat shield, and the lander itself.



The parachute (lower left) is easy to identify because it is especially bright and the backshell is still attached to the parachute cords. The double dark marking at right seems most consistent with disturbance of the ground from impact and bouncing of the heat shield, which fell from a height of about 10 kilometers. The last object (upper left) is the Phoenix Lander whose two solar panels on either side of the lander are clearly visible.

[zard0z]

Is that ice under the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars...?  Phoenix, which landed a week ago, was expected to dig under the Martian soil to search for ice, but the lander's braking jets may already have uncovered some during descent. Pictured above is an image taken last week by the Robotic Arm Camera showing the unusual light-colored substance just in front of Phoenix's landing pad. Over the next few weeks, Phoenix will continue to photograph its surroundings, analyze the composition of this hard light substrate, and dig into the surrounding soil. Were the unusual light substrate indeed Martian ice, it would give Phoenix a convenient pedestal to investigate the history of water on Mars, and to better determine whether the boundary between ice and soil was ever capable of supporting life.

[zard0z]

PHOENIX (AP) — The Phoenix lander has made its first attempt to dump a sample of Martian soil into its tiny testing oven but scientists say an unknown glitch kept any of the dirt from reaching the instrument.
Photos released Saturday show a scoopful of dirt sitting on and around the open oven door.

But none of the soil fell into the tiny chamber, designed to heat soil and test for signs of life-friendly elements.

Mission scientist William Boynton of the University of Arizona says members of the Mars lander team have not yet figured what caused the problem.

[zard0z]

 The dirt-filled scoop approaches one of TEGA's eight ovens. Once in the oven, a soil material will be baked and the emitted gasses categorized by a mass spectrometer. Quite possibly, some of the light colored material visible in the scoop has the same composition as the light material imaged near the foot of the Lander, which may be ice. Phoenix is scheduled to spend the next three months digging, baking and chemically analyzing its immediate surroundings to better understand Mars and whether the boundary between ice and soil was ever capable of supporting life. You can also see the disk sent with Phoenix with messages of greetings from the NASA crew...

[zard0z]

A flat, smooth, shiny feature dubbed the Snow Queen is near the top of this color mosaic of the surface beneath the Phoenix Mars Lander. Recorded with the lander's robotic arm camera as it was maneuvered to look under the lander, the region also includes a leg and plate-sized footpad. An intriguing detail near the footpad at about the 2 o'clock position, is a metal spring partially buried in martian soil, a piece of the arm's now opened biobarrier. The smooth Snow Queen feature is strongly suspected to be ice originally just under the soil, uncovered by the thruster rockets as Phoenix set down on the north polar plains of Mars. In fact, the apparent holes or depressions in the Snow Queen's otherwise flat surface are located just under the thrusters.

[zard0z]

What's a good recipe for preparing Martian soil? Start by filling your robot's scoop a bit less than half way. Next, dump your Martian soil into one of your TEGA ovens, being sure to watch out for clumping. Then, slowly increase the temperature to over 1000 degrees Celsius over several days. Keep checking to see when your soil becomes vaporized. Finally, your Martian soil is not ready for eating, but rather sniffing The above technique is being used by the Phoenix Lander that arrived on Mars three weeks ago. Data from the first batch of baked soil should be available in a few days. Pictured above, a circular array of the Phoenix Lander's solar panels are visible on the left, while a scoop partly filled with Martian soil is visible on the right. The robotic Phoenix Lander will spend much of the next three months digging, scooping, baking, sniffing, zapping, dissolving, and magnifying bits of Mars to help neighboring Earthlings learn more about the hydrologic and biologic possibilities of the sometimes mysterious red planet.

Also at the top of the picture at the horizon you can just barely make out a dust storm rolling across...