Phoenix lands on Mars !

NASA ^ | 5.25.08

[libh8er]

05.25.08

Brent Shockley 4:53 pm Touchdown detected!! We're on the surface of Mars and there is celebration in Mission Control!!

4:50 pm Parachute deploy detected! Heat shield deploy detected! Radar ground lock detected!

4:48 pm Odyssey has maintained a signal from Phoenix through the period of peak heating when we might have experienced a loss of communications due to plasma blackout.

4:45 pm Phoenix has now entered the atmosphere. We expect possible plasma blackout in about a minute. Phoenix is less than three minutes to parachute deploy and less than seven minutes to touchdown.

4:39 pm We have now verified a successful cruise stage separation and turn to entry. The Phoenix UHF signal is also being picked up by Mars Odyssey. We're now less than six minutes from entry, at which point events will happen in rapid succession. Less than a minute after entry, Phoenix will begin heating to the point of plasma blackout due to the friction created by the atmosphere, during which we may lose communication briefly. Phoenix will then come out of plasma blackout about two minutes later. Over the four minutes following that, Phoenix will deploy its parachute, heat shield, lander legs, and then hopefully come to a soft landing on Mars.

4:29 pm The Mission Manager, Joe Guinn, has just announced that we should all be at our stations in preparation to bid farewell to our cruise stage, which has provided us an excellent trip to Mars. Cruise stage separation is in eight minutes.

4:18 pm We've now confirmed completion of the successful pressurization of the descent engines. This is a critical event that is now behind us. We're expecting cruise stage separation in less than twenty minutes.

4:10 pm There has been a request for clarification regarding the EDL timeline. The timeline posted below is what we refer to as the "Earth Receive Time." This is the time when we get the signal here in Mission Control. Since it takes fifteen minutes for a signal to get from Mars to Earth, all the EDL events occur about fifteen minutes prior to the data we received confirming that these events happened. We've also just received confirmation that Odyssey has completed a slew in preparation for relay operations during EDL. Also, it was just announced that the peanuts are being opened and distributed here in Mission Control. This is a JPL tradition that goes back to the Ranger missions to the moon in the sixties.

4:07 pm For those of you watching NASA TV, you're seeing periodic shots of Mission Control in between and during interviews. From where I sit, and what your probably can't see, are the rooms surrounding Mission Control, which are also full of people. Two of the four walls are glass windows, opening to to the "dark room" from which Gay Yee Hill is broadcasting on NASA TV, as well as another conference room. I can also see a viewing gallery above the "dark room" which is also full of people. Everyone is excited and you can feel a nervous tension building. Some folks in Mission Control are even talking via cell phones through the glass as they wish each other luck.

3:35 pm It's great to see so many people following along in the comments. We are currently receiving real-time data from the spacecraft via the Deep Space Network. In fact, we had near continuous coverage for the last couple weeks in order to keep a careful eye on the spacecraft status. Some of you may notice from the live shot on NASA TV a green and black chart on the wall. This chart shows our Doppler shift as a result of the increase in speed of our spacecraft due to the Mars "gravity well." As get closer and closer to Mars, we pick up speed due to gravity. We enter the atmosphere at over 12,000 miles per hour, relative to Mars. We are now about an hour from EDL.

[Carl LaFong]

That kind of looks like Gamera , friend to all children.

[acoulterfan]

At 6:30 PST Nasa.gov will be back to give some of the first lander images!!!

[aft_lizard]

Bush lied about there being WMD’s on Mars, impeach him now!

[Ozone34]

Not a single minority in the control room - this was a white mans venture and totally racist America landing a craft on mars for the first time in history. I can see the headlines now.

We've already been there. This is just history repeating itself:

The Old Negro Space Program

[libh8er]

From wikipedia

Fuk K. Li is the manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He received his bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined JPL in 1979 and has been involved in radar remote sensing activities. He has developed a number of system analysis tools for spaceborne synthetic aperture radar system design, and participated in the development of and applications for interferometric synthetic aperture radar. From 1983 to 1988, he was the project engineer for the NASA Scatterometer. He was principal investigator for an airborne rain mapping radar, an airborne cloud mapping radar, an experiment using spaceborne imaging radar to study rainfall effects on ocean roughness, and the development of an airborne active/passive microwave system for ocean salinity and soil moisture sensing. From 1997 to 2001 he managed the New Millennium Program, designed to flight-validate key technologies that bring significant benefits to future science missions. He became deputy director of JPL's Solar System Exploration Program Directorate in 2001, and deputy director for the Mars Exploration Directorate in 2004.

[clintonh8r]

Nice shootin’, boys!

[raybbr]

Isn’t this about 4 hours early? What happened to speed things up?

Cosmic tailwind?

[Fiji Hill]

ATOMIC SERMON

Early Sunday mornin’, the preacher gave his warnin’
Said you’d better get down and pray.
You better listen to me mister, and you listen sister,
We’re gettin’ close to that great day.
You better listen to the teachin’ of the Good Book I’m preachin’
Said that men would fly like birds.
But brother do you hear me, these things scare me,
I don’t know how to put it in words.

You’d better stop them scientists from re-searchin’
‘Cause they done gone too far.
They got these boys flyin’ faster than sound,
And the whole world’s in a war.
Man that atomic energy sure scares me,
‘Cause if it will do what they claim,
You better start thinkin’ ‘bout savin’ your soul,
Or Sam Johnson ain’t my name!

Just a plain bomb is bad but that A-bomb is worse,
And they done named that H-bomb well.
Thousand times stronger than that A-bomb is,
And it’s gonna blow us all to - kingdom come!
Now I’m not tryin’ to scare you, I’m just statin’ facts
They said they’d build man-made stars.
But that’s a job I’m gonna leave to the Lord,
And I ain’t got no business on Mars.

You’d better stop them scientists from re-searchin’
‘Cause they done gone too far.
They got these boys flyin’ faster than sound,
They got the whole world in a war.
Man that atomic energy sure scares me,
‘Cause if it will do what they claim,
You better start thinkin’ ‘bout savin’ your soul,
Or Sam Johnson ain’t my name!

Now I’m thankful for the drugs that kills the bugs,
The mosquitos, and the mice and the fleas.
Instead of us tryin’ to get up to Mars,
We better get down on our knees!
And thank the good Lord for the world we have,
And in closin’ I got this to say:
If God intended we should go to Mars
Why’d He put it so far away?

You better stop them scientists from re-searchin’
‘Cause they done gone too far.
They got these boys flyin’ faster than sound,
They got the whole world in a war.
Man that atomic energy sure scares me,
‘Cause if it will do what they claim,
You better start thinkin’ ‘bout savin’ your soul,
Or Sam Johnson ain’t my name!
You think I’m kiddin”?
Sam Johnson ain’t my name!

Billy Hughes and his Rhythm Buckeroos [1953]

[Lockbar]

Hooray for Fuk!!

[Tanniker Smith]

Pictures! We need pictures!

How soon til they arrive?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xJzAYYrX8

[KingSnorky]

between 9:30 and 9:45 pm EST tonight...

[machogirl]

an engineering stud!

[onedoug]

Well met. The next few days should be interesting indeed.

[Appleby]

That would be Mars, mate. Before you shriek YOUARACIST! you might want to get your face aimed in the right direction.

I watched this on Discovery Canada and except for the compulsion of the host to blabber unnecessarily right over the NASA voices at the moment of truth, it was most exciting.

[CapnJack]

So what is this Phoenix thing suppose to do? Drive around in circles and collect dust? Look for Martians?

Or is it another billion dollar boondoggle?

[MarkL]

What did Sheila Jackson Lee have to say?

Mark

[grimalkin]

Awesome news!

[Mark]

Truth time. Which movie set was all of this filmed on?

[llevrok]

Except for Fuk Li, Director of JPL's Mars Exploration Directorate

Don't forget congratulating his brother, Fuk Hu