Slashdot Mirror
Mars Phoenix Probe Successfully Launched
necro81 writes "The Mars Phoenix lander, built from the ashes of two earlier Mars missions, successfully launched atop a Delta II rocket from Canaveral this morning. The mission takes the 350-kg lander to northern latitudes (comparable to Greenland or Siberia) to investigate subsurface ice for the chemical precursors of life. The lander should arrive on Mars on May 25, 2008. 'NASA has never attempted to land a spacecraft on Mars at such a high northern latitude. A lander intended for the red planet's South Pole went silent immediately upon arrival in 1999. That failure, combined with the loss of the companion Mars orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.'"
If a BIOS company can force a web browser to change its name, then why not a Mars probe?
80m6y9a8h6w-8 ty-w486y 0a8myr690mauh6 a04m6y-a9846h,-9ae8ya-f9kga-48 p9myta-9874,6y-9a8ry-z98ry6m09,64h-98ey6-9876yc-aw 48m6y-98ru,gifduyg -08mnyae047garko,uzh09gfaiksmuygt8oa76tgao8imaseu[ y5a[-a50834]=4tauy8ap923Pap8m6ytq294-08YMN69A4,,-0 ym798p*MY$5(*MY$8y6mp0aij,4-09au6-ya97t46a-w94h
When did we drop 'Cape'?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/allude
allude (-ld)
intr.v. alluded, alluding, alludes
To make an indirect reference: The candidate alluded to the recent war by saying, "We've all made sacrifices."
[Latin alldere, to play with : ad-, ad- + ldere, to play (from ldus, game; see leid- in Indo-European roots).]
Usage Note: Allude and allusion are often used where the more general terms refer and reference would be preferable. Allude and allusion normally apply to indirect references in which the source is not specifically identified.
Included on the lander is a Canadian-built weather station.s -lander.html
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/04/mar
Does any one know if on Mars the North Pole actually the south seeking pole (as on earth) or is it a real north seeking pole like we are used to in bar magnets etc?
Here's what happened to the missing Mars Polar Lander: http://youtube.com/watch?v=x_iPvUWyzhE
- Heineken fanboi
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Puny humans! This one will go silent too! Not only you don't ask for permission to visit, but you also pollute our water supply with useless noisy junk!
This time, not even Tom Cruise will save you!
Eric: "What're quantum mechanics?"
Rincewind: "I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."
It would be really cool if it found a frozen mammoth like this one. Of course it also has an equal chance at drilling-through to the inner sanctuary of the Q Continuum while there on Mars.
The game.
Thank you for explaining what a Phoenix is. I had always assumed it was the name of a web browser.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/04/tech/pri ntable3133675.shtml
Seriously, if you are going to link to an Associated Press article, please link to a version that doesn't require registration to read.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
There's already a video of the launch on youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0X1FoyLRGY
Good stuff. Someday I have to see a launch in person, it's got to be impressive
The first time my eyes skimmed this, I thought I read that it had landed. Bummer. Biggest trial is still yet to come, imo.
We have just published yesterday our comprehensive article/interview with NASA on the Phoenix - you can find it here: Phoenix interview
Likewise the AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, built on the technology developed for the AIM-47 which never went operational because the two aircraft it was designed for didn't either.
rj
Think how many people could have been fed with this money.
$420 million. Enough to buy every person in the US 1 apple. Just one.
Think how many people have been fed with this money. The operative word you're looking for is jobs. Go get one. You might like it.
It seems like all the probes they send up are specifically not looking for life. NASA always says, "oh, we're looking for geological data and evidence of water, but not life", or now, "we're looking for organic compounds, and we're sending up a microscope, but we're really not looking for life".
What's funny is the original Viking mission had a simple test for life. It produced a result that is controversial to this day. Surely in the 30 years since then, they could come up with version 2.0 of some life tests, and fly them? These landers are weighing in the 1,000 lbs range. They can't put in 50lbs of biological test instruments in there somewhere?
I hate to get conspiratorial here, but if there were non-Earth biological life on some other planet, that would not be welcome news to the "no evolution in schools" crowd. Is this crowd preventing Nasa from doing the most interesting thing they should be doing which is looking for microbes on that planet? The other possible reason is they don't want to set expectations, and if they conclusively found no life up there, maybe that would dampen enthusiasm for spending $100bil to send a manned mission?
Dangit, do you have to be so pessmistic ?
Think about how many guns and bombs and other things that actively make peoples lifes miserable will not be bought with this money.
There, you can start cheering now. I'm all for space exploration because it takes money that would otherwise most likely be used for killing people.
The Scout missions are actually small, "lower-cost" missions. All of the instruments riding on Phoenix are tiny. Take, for example, the lidar (laser radar) system. On Earth these systems weigh many hundreds of kilograms. The one going to Mars weighs only 6.5 kg. Fitting a capable instrument into such a small package was no small task! One of the things that Phoenix will try to do is be the first to "taste the water". There are many indirect detections of water from radars, spectrometers and the like. Phoenix will actually try to scoop some ice up and will analyze it on-board. As far as we know, water is essential for life, and so this is a big step. The same instruments will also try to detect organic matter, which *is* a test for life (either past or present).
The problem is that detecting life remotely has proven a difficult task. It is hard to rule out soil chemistry, and we don't know enough about potential Martian microbes to target their signs. Even if there was life, tests may create the same kind of controversies that Viking did. Only microscopic views of life wiggling around would be definitative evidence, but that would be an expensive mission, especially if microbes are small and sparse. (The left-right test has promise, but even that is not definative.)
Table-ized A.I.
See current united states administration as example.
I can't wait for her to be president! we need more Clinton scandals! and know the first lady can really make a difference, think of all the other dignitaries wives that will "feel" the Clinton difference!
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Space exploration is risky business, and there have been about as many successful missions to Mars as failures. An account of the fate of each mission to Mars is given in the hilarious Mars Scorecard. Fortunately, all of the missions in the new millenium have been pretty successful, and so we are very hopeful for Phoenix.
JFK did more America in 3 years, then reagan did in 8. For the republicans to push it back just shows how pathetic they can be.
With Mars, it seems that the arrival is a far more delicate maneuver, so we'll see what happens when it eventually gets there. Will this be another bull's eye? Splattttt!!! or a more dignified descent followed by the sounds of silence? or maybe, just maybe, it's going to work this time? More news in 9 months...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The poor will always be with us. If you feed them now, more of them will die worse later... In short no good has ever resulted from wasting resources on feeding the poor. Finding them jobs is a much better idea.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Explains it all: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm? id=753652006
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You pay $1.40 for an apple?
This animation from Maas Digital shows that the planned landing of Phoenix is very ambitious. As the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere it is protected by a heat shield. Notice the ice cap on the northern pole, which was constructed from images from the Mars Global Surveyor. A parachute will be used to slow the descent, but because the atmosphere is so thin, it will still be going *very* fast. You can see clouds in the background, which were also seen from orbit by MGS.
A key event happens after the parachute and heat shield rip away: the landing gear deploys, and then the retro-rockets kick in. One problem with the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander was that the sequence of the last two events was reversed. An on-board sensor felt a jolt as when the landing gear locked in and assumed that the landing had taken place. The engines were shut off and the spacecraft plummeted to ground. So close...
It is very difficult to test landing procedures here on Earth. The gravity on Mars is only a third of what we have, and a simulation is never as good as testing in realistic conditions.
Too bad the original Polar Lander wasn't a "Phoenix".
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
What I find most stupid about those fucking stupid "NASA money could have been spent better" comments is that NASA has a comparatively miniscule share of the US budget. Now look at the war against a phantom/abstract threat and THAT budget and we're talking about saving lives if spent better. And probably making less enemies too.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"A glass CD loaded with literary, visual and audio science fiction works about the red planet was strapped to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. said Friday."r ary.html
:
"Inlcluded in the works are H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds,"..." http://www.space.com/news/070804_phoenix_spacelib
Now THAT'S just going to give the Martian ideas... and they'll probably get their vaccinations before invading this time. Bad enough that we put road maps to Earth on Pioneer and Voyager - not to mention pointing out the most dangerous native species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque). Now we've gone and given them invasion plans as well!
"Darn these annoying Earthlings!"
100 Feet = 30.48 Meters. Just in case you were wondering.
This, incidentally, is why they're claiming they're not looking for life--because, as it turns out, bulletproof confirmation of life (or past life) is hard, short of some Martians waving to the video cameras. Viking should've taught us that much. What these various probes are doing is science, which may suggest (but will not prove) the existence of life.
Of course, if we find little bacteria floating around in the ice that's visible under the microscopes, that would certainly be a blockbuster result.
Now we will finally find out if Mars has a Santa.
The summary mentions that the name is derived from the mythical phoenix, but this is only part of the story. The probe - the first to be launched as part of NASA's low cost "scout" program - was led by the University of Arizona. It's safe to guess that Phoenix also refers to the capital of the arid state. I wonder if I'm the only one who keeps confusing the leadership of this mission with the ubiquitous University of Phoenix.
For this and more information on the Phoenix mission, see the mission page.
Wow! Your post probably resulted in cardiac arrest somewhere on the planet! I'm sitting here giggling like a catholic school girl!
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
For the cost of the last 'emergency' appropriation to rebuild Iraq's infrastracture, we could have sent people to Mars. The returns on this venture would have made it far more cost effective than continuing to send unmanned probes to a close-by planet which we had the technology to go visit, in person, by about 1973.
Sure. The Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated how organic molecules might have been formed from abiotic processes on the primitive Earth. A test for organic matter is not definitive proof of life, but nevertheless an important one as a whole battery of different experiments would be needed in almost any realistic case.
Scientist - "Kilograms? Oh, shit! How many pounds in a kilogram,... How many pounds in a kilogram? Uh,.. uh,... Let's see! Gotta think quick! Twenty pence in a shilling, 14 shillings in a pound,... We ARE using English pounds, right?!"
Manager - "Settle down now! We've got more than 300 days before landing on Mars."
Scientist - "Three hundred days?! Oh, shit! Are those English days or metric days,... English days or metric days?!"
Bye, bye, Phoenix! Can you say "Splat!?"
It has been discovered that there are microbes on earth that can survive in space.
It is possible that some of those microbes have been sent into space before we knew they could survive there. We've sent things to Mars for decades.
So, it is possible that there is life on Mars, but we put it there.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney