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Phoenix Mars Lander To Touch Down In 2 Hours

Posted by kdawson on from the entry-descent-and-landing dept.

AFP has a good summary of the pre-touchdown jitters the Phoenix Mars Lander crew is living through. The spacecraft has been under way for 10 months. If the landing goes according to plan — and only about half of the three dozen such attempts have — mission controllers at the University of Arizona will receive radio signals from the Martian surface at 23:53 GMT. Here's the Mars mission home. You can (in theory) track the lander here, but at the moment the JPL Solar System Simulator is "experiencing technical difficulties."

15 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. A better link for full JPL/Phoenix coverage by Mc_Anthony · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hello from JPL...

    Best place to go for coverage including links to NASA TV (live video starts at 3:30pm PDT is... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/phoenix.

    Wish us luck!

  2. Thing to note by Auckerman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nasa has pointed out to news agencies that only 5 of the 13 previous landings have been successful. Odds are, as always, this is not going to work. As slow as this science goes, taking several years from start of the project to a result, that a whole lot of pressure. The two most dangerous parts of this trip are the take off and landing. It's "easy" to adjust the craft when it's moving over 10 months in space, here we have a 7 minute fall from 12,000 mph to 5 mph. A LOT can go wrong.

    Here's to hoping we learn something about Mars again. If not, as always, we need to keep trying. If it weren't for these people, things we take for granted in daily life wouldn't exist.

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    Burn Hollywood Burn
    1. Re:Thing to note by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nasa has pointed out to news agencies that only 5 of the 13 previous landings have been successful. Odds are, as always, this is not going to work.

      The vast majority of US *landing* attempts have been successful. In fact, only the Mars Polar Lander failed. That's one. And this craft has been heavily tested to avoid the same fate (because its using similar technology as the Polar Lander).

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      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Thing to note by Grave · · Score: 2, Informative

      That would be 6 of 14 or 6 and 8.

  3. Watch by iminplaya · · Score: 2, Informative

    live

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    What?
  4. Re:Buddy's Idea by strstrep · · Score: 3, Informative

    If I remember correctly, Mars is too far away for TCP --- you'll timeout before you can establish the connection. I don't think anybody bothered to implement HTTP over UDP, though there is a port reserved for it.

  5. NASA TV link... by Sensible+Clod · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

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    The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
  6. Direct Links to NASA TV by Graftweed · · Score: 4, Informative

    I ran into problems getting the NASA TV streams to work under Firefox in Linux. Here are the direct links if you're in the same boat or don't want to go through javascript infested pages. I only tested the Windows Media one.

    Windows Media

    Real Media

    Quicktime

  7. Re:Buddy's Idea by Spikeles · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's some light reading for you..
    TCP Extensions for Space Communications
    TCP/IP Router for Space Applications

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    I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
  8. Re:I wonder by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

    (I say that - what do you think the odds are of them missing Mars entirely? That would be pretty impressive, especially at this late stage...) Well from what I've understood you don't want to hit a planet dead on, you actually aim for the edge so you have a long burn "sideways" in the athmosphere to slow you down. There's actually a fairly small approach angle, come in too steep and you'll hit the ground at too high speed, but come in too flat and you'll bounce off the athmosphere and continue out into space again. So it's not quite so unlikely as you might think, not that I have any odds to give you but with a thruster malfunction in early stages of decent it can happen.
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    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  9. MUCH Better bandwidth (TV quality streaming) by Danathar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't watch NASA TV from NASA (it sucks).

    This one is at much higher bandwidth.

    http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163

  10. Re:I wonder by servognome · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'd assume even if it bounced off it probably wouldn't have the momentum to escape Mars' gravity completely, so it would still land... just later than planned.

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    D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
  11. Landing successful by the_other_chewey · · Score: 4, Informative

    It just touched down - and survived.

    (Yeah, I know, 15min ago, gimme some lag ;-)

  12. Re:Huzzah by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    I just heard the same on CNN. A "successful land" signal has been received. However, there's still a lot yet that needs to happen, like locks popping off and things unfurling. Cross your fingers.

    Let's see if the prediction that there will be big polygonal "tiles" on the surface holds out (based on orbiter photos). It will look like a giant bathroom tile floor with dust and crap if so...

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    Table-ized A.I.
  13. Landed almost perfectly flat by the_other_chewey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Phoenix' tilt sensor reports it to be sitting on the surface
    with a tilt of a quarter of a degree!

    This is as close to perfection as it could possibly get.