Slashdot Mirror
NASA Phoenix Mission Ready For Mars Landing
Several readers relayed the press release from JPL about the upcoming landing of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander on May 25. It's going to set down in the north polar regions and look for indications of whether conditions have ever been favorable for microbial life. "Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 21,000 kilometers per hour... In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 8 kilometers per hour... 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. 'Internationally, fewer than half the attempts have succeeded.'"
NASA: Oh my, Mars, what big craters you have!
GrandMars: All the better to SWALLOW you with.. grrrr!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
This is not a trip to grandma's house
You've never met my grandma. As a kid, going there felt like a 25,000 mph trip, and there are still skidmarks from my shoes trying wildy to decelerate while my parents dragged me into the house. And about half of the times they tried taking me there, it failed too...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I can't seem to find the artist's view of the failed mission, with the Phoenix lander splattered all over the place and bits falling back down on Spirit and Opportunity...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Maybe that's where the name idea came from...
Ah. That'll depend on whos grandma we're talking about, wouldn't it?
"The lander exploded in, according to latest estimations, about 13,000 pieces. As you may see in this depiction, some of those pieces may hit opportunity and start a chain reaction of exploding landers."
They're just learning from past mistakes.
Much like the experienced worker that estimates a month for a two hour job.
"You want to spend MULTIPLES of the cost of the entire project on making the landings more difficult, more violent and less reliable when we can't even get half of what we send onto the planet successfully?"
He must work for the government then...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
"So, your way of studying the landing speed limit of an object in another planet is crashing you car into objects."
Well, it seems to work for particle physicists...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
"21,000 kilometers per hour..." - Arggh! Ed (Weiler)! some of your guys are using metric units! Have a quick check round the lab and make sure they all are! Maybe the quiet guy in the corner in charge of retro rockets is still using miles not kilometres!
;-)
I'm sure you have, but you know, we've been here before...