Phoenix: 8 days & counting

[Dr Mordrid]

Just a reminder that on May 25th NASA's Phoenix lander will set down near the North pole of Mars.

The mission: search for water and life

Phoenix mission home page....

[cjolley]

Very interesting article on the history and mission of Phoenix.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/23/mars.lander/index.html

...

It's risky business. Historically, 55 percent of all Mars missions have ended in failure. And tensions will be particularly high with the Phoenix spacecraft.

From an overall design standpoint, it is twin to the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, and was supposed to travel to Mars in 2001 as the Mars Surveyor spacecraft. They were originally part of the "better, faster, cheaper" program, formulated by then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin to beef up planetary exploration on a lean budget.

But disaster struck.

Mars Polar Lander malfunctioned during its entry and descent into Mars' atmosphere in 1999 and crashed. Technical investigations later concluded that as many as a dozen design flaws or malfunctions doomed the spacecraft.

The failure of that mission, as well as another spacecraft called the Mars Climate Orbiter the same year, led to some soul searching at NASA. The agency put future missions on hold to rethink the "better, faster, cheaper" approach. And Mars Surveyor went to the warehouse.

"The trouble is somebody forgot the 'better' part," said Weiler. "By pushing the faster and cheaper part so hard, engineers were forced to make decisions that weren't necessarily the best and right decisions. And that led to both the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and ultimately the Mars Polar Lander and eventually the entire Mars program."

But all was not lost. In 2003, Peter Smith proposed a plan to reengineer that mothballed spacecraft and fly it on a mission to look for signatures of life in the ice and dirt of Mars far North. Mars Phoenix, literally and figuratively, rose from the ashes of Surveyor.

...

[cjolley]

Well Well, we seem to have an intact landing

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

Mars Phoenix Lander Update -- Touchdown
A signal has been detected from Phoenix indicating that the lander is on the surface of Mars.
We will post updates during the landing event. Please update your browser frequently.

[Mehen]

You know... I really started to get excited about this. Then I saw the first pictures. Some dirt - awesome! ... Better find something cool... how much did this cost again?

[cjolley]

You know... I really started to get excited about this. Then I saw the first pictures. Some dirt - awesome! ... Better find something cool... how much did this cost again?

Didn't cost you anything.

You're welcome.

[Lizzard[MPE]]

It's phenomenal we can land items on other planets...well planet.

[Nowhere]

Definatelly planets (Venus landers)

[Mehen]

Didn't cost you anything.

You're welcome.

I think Canadians should be able to vote in US elections. The US President probably has more impact on us than the Prime Minister anyways.

[Gurm]

Definatelly planets (Venus landers)

And haven't we cratered into Titan?

[MultimediaMan]

Crater, no...we did parachute a probe onto Titan - Huygens.

We also sent a parachuting probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, launched from Galileo: This was the Atmospheric probe mission of Galileo. After a few years, we retired Galileo by sending into the planet we sent it to examine: Jupiter. It burned up in the upper atmosphere.

We also Landed a space probe onto an asteroid - NEAR did so and was never designed to...it survived. Hayabusa also touched an asteriod, but the probe was not able to respond.

Then we smacked the daylights out of a Comet with a 900 pound projectile to see what came out of it... (Deep Impact).

Then of course there were the various soft and hard landings on Venus, Mars and the Moon (intentional and otherwise) over the past 30 years or so... Surveyor, Luna, Apollo, Venera, Viking, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and now Phoenix.

We're getting the hang of this.

[Gurm]

Now just give me a gravitic drive system and some FTL. W00t!

[Nowhere]

And haven't we cratered into Titan?

Well, yeah, but that's not exactly a planet

(and yes, I also don't count Jupiter...it's sort of hard to speak about landing in this case )

[RedRed]

Intresting quote - dont have it to hand, but the mission controller said something to the effect that they had managed to do the equivelent of getting a hole in one, driving from Florida, with the hole in Austraila, with the hole moving!

The landing was an amazing feat of engineering.

[Gurm]

Intresting quote - dont have it to hand, but the mission controller said something to the effect that they had managed to do the equivelent of getting a hole in one, driving from Florida, with the hole in Austraila, with the hole moving!

The landing was an amazing feat of engineering.

Yes, but if you had a 10-billion dollar budget I'm sure you could design a guidance system for your golf ball, too. *grin*

[Nowhere]

What Gurm said.

It's sad that they feel obliged to make such comparisons...