Mars Lander Team Prepares for "Seven Minutes of Terror"

National Geographic News ^ | 5-13-2008 | Lander Team Prepares for "Seven Minutes of Terror"<b>Victoria Jaggard

[blam]

[BloodOrFreedom]

"NASA scientists are gearing up for the "seven minutes of terror" that could make or break the $420-million mission...and each of those have to work perfectly for this to go as planned," Goldstein said."

There are a lot of "if"s going into this mission. Many things can go wrong and $420 mil is a pretty chunk of change.

Well, gotta do what we gotta do. Famous words rekindled for this modern age..."One small, insanely expensive mars probe; One giant leap for mankind"

[MarineBrat]

It won't actually land on the pole... it'll be at about 68 degrees north latitude, per this NASA email I got today.

 

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Phoenix set to land on Mars	05.13.2008
+ Play Audio | + Download Audio | + Email to a friend | + Join mailing list 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. Right: An artist's concept of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander a moment before its 2008 touchdown on the arctic plains of Mars. Pulsed rocket engines control the spacecraft's speed during the final seconds of descent. [Larger image] "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." Above: The landing site chosen for NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, at about 68 degrees north latitude, is much farther north than the sites where previous spacecraft have landed on Mars. [more] 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. Right: An artist's concept: Months after landing, Phoenix begins to shut down operations as winter sets in. Far-northern latitudes on Mars experience no sunlight during winter, depriving the solar-powered lander of electricity. Frost covering the region as the atmosphere cools will eventually bury Phoenix in ice. "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! SEND THIS STORY TO A FRIEND Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA more information   Phoenix --mission home page Credits: The Phoenix mission is led by Smith with project management at JPL. The development partnership is with Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions are from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. NASA's Future: The Vision for Space Exploration

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[Crim]

Anyone taking odds on convenient Mission failure?

[Buffalo Head]

Is your post intended to be positive or negative?

[PhilDragoo]

Fascinating and necessary. I would like very much for them to succeed and I know that if they don't they will keep trying because they must.

This exploration is an imperative apart from the polital-humanitarian follies played out by fools.

[Steve Van Doorn]

Why use a stationary Lander when the other two worked so well?

[devolve]

.

This time they won’t mix up metric and standard parameters I hope!

I thought I had some good Martian graphics - I’ll heve to dig through my toys

[Crim]

“Is your post intended to be positive or negative?”

Neutral....there are other states of being than just + or -

[devolve]

[devolve]

[LibWhacker]

There are 14 pyrotechnic events, and each of those have to work perfectly for this to go as planned

Amazing how Rube Goldbergy these things HAVE to be. Fourteen pyrotechnic events after sitting in a deep freezer for six months... gee... I don't know if my truck would start after sitting in the garage for six months. And that's only one pyrotechnic event, and not one stored in a deep freezer either.

Definitely going to be a nerve-wracking landing, that's for sure. Got my fingers crossed. Go Phoenix!

[BlueVelvet]

May 25. I’m glad I saw this and will look forward to the landing. Hope they play it up in the news so I don’t miss it.

[BlueVelvet]

Don’t say that, we want it to succeed. Think good thoughts.

[BlueVelvet]

Your pictures are so pretty. I don’t know how you can do that, make them move like that.

[Captain Beyond]

bump

[Captain Beyond]

Nice graphics way to go.

[devolve]

.

The first one - X-Files + Mars is 3 layers of animated .gifs

The second one is one composite animated image - this Star Trek graphic is an animated Star Trek scene I made last year and just added the blue UAV (current unmanned aircraft) and the small swirling space oddity just to the right of it

I don’t use a computer to create these - I use a WebTV Plus

[BlueVelvet]

Three layers of animated gifs, I have no idea how you would do that. Is it really hard to learn?. The blue UAV thing really moves and the stars are cool.

I wish I could do that.