Watch your back Phoenix.
Posted on 05/13/2008 1:39:27 PM PDT by grimalkin
Phoenix set to land on Mars
05.13.2008
May 13, 2008: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls of Martian soil and buried ice. The lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on Sunday, May 25th.
Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 13,000 mph. In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 5 mph before its three legs reach the ground. Confirmation of the landing could come as early as 7:53 p.m. EDT.
"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 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Internationally, fewer than half of all attempts to land on Mars have succeeded."
Rocks large enough to spoil the landing or prevent opening of the solar panels present the greatest known risk. However, images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailed enough to show individual rocks smaller than the lander, have helped lessen that risk.
"We have blanketed nearly the entire landing area with HiRISE images," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, chairman of the Phoenix landing-site working group. "This is one of the least rocky areas on all of Mars and we are confident that rocks will not detrimentally impact the ability of Phoenix to land safely."
Earlier in 2002, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.
"Phoenix will land farther north on Mars than any previous mission," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The solar-powered robotic lander will manipulate a 7.7-foot arm to scoop up samples of soil and underground ice. Onboard laboratory instruments will analyze the samples. Cameras and a Canadian-supplied weather station will supply other information about the site's environment.
"The Phoenix mission not only studies the northern permafrost region, but also takes the next step in Mars exploration by determining whether this frosty region, which may encompass as much as 25 percent of the Martian surface, is habitable," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
One research goal is to assess whether conditions at the site ever have been favorable for microbial life. The composition and texture of soil above the ice could give clues to whether the ice ever melts in response to long-term climate cycles. Another important question is whether the scooped-up samples contain carbon-based chemicals that are potential building blocks and food for life itself.
Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates. And good luck, Phoenix!
Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Hope they have that metric conversion worked out this time.
“In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 5 mph before its three legs reach the ground...”
Got one of them EPA/NTSB mandated 5mph bumpers eh?
Well, the last two had the airbags, so ...
Thanks for the thread, I’d forgotten about this. Please keep us informed.
Another topic, I thought the new CERN collider was going on-line this month, but their website has nothing but old news and old press releases. Does anyone have data on this?
Mars landers have not a great record of success. Better lately.
The whole city? Good thing it’s a dry heat.
Forget those sissy inflatable ballons and bouncing about like a bit of flotsam.
Landing gear!
Retro rockets fire!
The manly way to get to Mars!
Phoenix Mars Lander: 7 minutes of Terror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524&feature=related
“Hope they have that metric conversion worked out this time.”
That was the cover story to hide the real screw-up. Apparently, the upper stage engine — the engine that was supposed to put it into Mars orbit — had a problem operating when extremely cold. If you started the thrusters at really cold temps (like what you got after going in interplanetary space for the trip to Mars), they tended to explode. Thermal shock did for the engine bells. It went kaboom. The radio was off when they started it, and they never regained comm (for obvious reasons).
There were about half a dozen other flaws in the design that would have caused a mission failure, too. That probe was built under Dan Golden’s cheaper, better, and faster initiative. Engineers warn, “I can give it to you good, fast, and cheap; pick any two.” In this case, they got that Mars probe done fast and cheap.
Two stories that explain what really happened can be found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20093575/ and here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11718925/
</sarcasm>(Manned space missions are a colossal waste of taxpayer money.)
I am not so much worried about the Phoenix landing on a large rock. I’m more concerned it might land on an Illudiom Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator!
“(Manned space missions are a colossal waste of taxpayer money.)”
Nope.
It’s long term survival of the human species.
The nations that lead on the frontier, dictate the course of human history.
It’s about why any of us are here at all.
Astronaut Story Musgrave.....
“We have been a frontier culture. We were born out of exploration, we were born out of adventure. We were born out of the plains and the mountains. We’ve been a very physical kind of culture. And so, if you look at adventure, if you look at exploration, if you look at immersion in nature, a physical culture, and all those things, you can see directly how space flight relates to the way America has been born and how it evolved.” -Astronaut Story Musgrave
Fingers crossed....
Moreover, nearly half of all missions to Mars -- even several recent ones-- have failed for various reasons. For whatever reason, missions to Mars have a much lower success rate than missions to the other planets.
Watch your back Phoenix.
Actually, it was a whole lot more than just that. Check out the incident report to see how many different ways they screwed the pooch.
IMO, the ultimate blame for that failure goes to the Ops team. The problem you're talking about came as a result of the Ops team and Lockheed Martin trying to work around the fact that a particular software module was not working -- it had to do with modeling the thruster firings used to desaturate the Spacecraft's reaction wheels. JPL assumed Lockmart was sending metric data; LockMart assumed JPL was aware that they were sending data in English units. Nobody bothered to check.
Over time, the navigation person (there was only one) realized there was an error due to mismodeled thruster firings during the coast phase, but didn't report it to the spacecraft team until late in the game. And, apparently, he didn't work very hard to figure out whether LockMart was sending him data in the form he had assumed.
The NAV guy wasn't really an integral part of the Ops team -- he provided data to them. And (as the report pointed out) he had very little knowledge of the mission itself. He eventually recommended a trim burn, but the Ops team had not bothered to have a procedure ready to go in the event that the trim maneuver would be needed.
And there is much, much more....
Nope. Different mission, different failure.
Let’s hope this Mars lander doesn’t ‘mysteriously’ disappear, too.
Puh-leeze.
Practice your humanist religion and/or your hobby on your own dime. Leave us taxpayers out of it.
The nations that lead on the frontier, dictate the course of human history. I would assume you would rather that not be China?
It's common sense, and inevitable. Americans ARE explorers and support NASA.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=20898
"A new Gallup Poll shows more than two- thirds of respondents support the nation's stepping-stone approach to space exploration, which includes flying the space shuttle to complete the International Space Station, building a replacement vehicle for the space shuttle, returning humans to the moon, and exploring Mars and points beyond. (Respondents support this approach if NASA's budget does not exceed 1 percent of the federal budget.)"
NASA is one of the last places to complain about where our tax moneys are spent. Not to mention the massive tech return on such endeavours. You likley can not go a day without using tech developed from manned spaceflight. Funny how that works, reaching farther then before creates growth in ways unexpected.
NASA is barely a blip on this chart......
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