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The Phoenix Has Landed
Iddo Genuth writes "Precisely at 7:53PM EST, the "Phoenix Mars Lander" touched-down on the desert-like surface of Mars. Since its launch on August 4th, 2007, the spacecraft has covered more than 680,752,512 kilometers, traveling at average speeds of around 120,000 km/hr. Upon arriving at its destination, the Phoenix will begin its exploration of our intriguing neighbor planet, in a mission to help astronomers resolve at least some of the many questions regarding Mars. The key question remains: can the Red Planet support some form of life?" Hella grats to our nerd brethren — you looked great on the Science channel. Yes I'm watching this live. Can't wait to see what happens next.
Update: 05/26 03:0 GMT by KD : zof sends a link to the first pictures from Phoenix.
Update: 05/26 03:0 GMT by KD : zof sends a link to the first pictures from Phoenix.
I understand your point. Just so we're all clear, though; Phoenix sits on legs, not wheels, so there will be no 'puttering around' the pole.
Ice on the surface is further north, but they expect the top meter of soil to be about 80% ice at the landing site.
The short answer, to keep inside the weight budget. When you add wheels, you need to compromise on the science instruments.
So Phoenix packs much better science gear than the rovers, and to compensate they just try to drop it somewhere uniform and with a decent chance of finding what you are looking for regardless of the specific drop point.
When dissenters questioned whether the warming of our enemy's planet was due to his own self-destructive habits or our weaponry, K'Breel ordered their gelsacs pierced on the spot.
Shit! Space is still no escape from stupid leaders.
Table-ized A.I.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=313&cID=7
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
Within minutes of the first downlink, pictures were available on the net.
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That's fantastic.
Here are the photos it has taken so far.
http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7
Two reasons: The first is weight - mobility systems cost a great of it, and every gram alloted to them is a gram that can't be spent on science. Which also means that had it wheels, Phoenix would be limited to same modest science package the rovers have. The second is mission life time - unlike the rovers, the odds of Phoenix dying once winter comes are near unity. Which means that a notional wheeled Phoenix with it's much more modest science package won't cover much ground before freezing to death.
But that is the logo for the lander though...
Hello, NASA engineer here. Look up the Mars Science Lander (MSL) mission being built at JPL (link below). Nuke powered and huge. Upgrade from the Vikings mission since it has WHEELS. Will launch in September 2009.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
Dammit, the University of Arizona website (which hosts the high resolution images) has been slashdotted. A few of the photos are already up on Wikipedia though, so use that if you can't get through.
The problem is not a shortage of raw materials (Pu-238 is currently made by irradiating components of otherwise useless nuclear waste.) The problem is that the steps involved in production and extraction of the isotope are dangerous, esoteric and expensive, so we haven't been doing it.
From the blog: "They're black and white pictures meant primarily to tell whether our deployments successfully occurred."
Color pictures in high-res take a lot longer to download over a very slow radio link (Latency to mars is 20 - 40 minutes).
Black and white photos are the "test" set because you'll get them down quicker.
I wonder why they don't have colour immagers!?
Usually they use filters to provide color for space missions. The first pass is a general survey. Filter-based color requires multiple images of the same spot, which will probably come later. Plus, they will probably use "science-friendly" filters before they use human-eye-friendly filters. Science before beauty. Just be patient...
Table-ized A.I.
we can send a robotic spaceship 680 million miles through deep space, but cannot make an electric car. Hmmmmmm.
This is pure ignorance talking. Having an RTG around isn't going to "contaminate" anything. They are fully sealed, and even in the worst case, can withstand extremely severe impacts without releasing any fissile material.
And in the worst case??? We end up with a boulder somewhere on Mars that just happens to stay warm. "Plutonium" is a good and scary word, but the Plutonium 238 used in RTGs is completely different from the Plutonium 239 used in nuclear weapons. It has a half-life of less than a century, and is merely an alpha emitter. Practically zero gamma emissions, which is the only kind of "radiation" people know about, and what they're so terribly afraid of.
Even if there was a launch failure high in the Earth's atmosphere, who cares? It's not a gamma emitter... It can't possibly do any damage to anyone, unless someone perhaps feels the urge to eat large quantities of it, in which case it's probably more toxic as a heavy metal than as a radioactive substance.
Remember, it's happened before... Apollo 13's RTG is currently keeping the fish warm, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Despite the high speed re-entry, the casing remains in-tact.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A "cheap" CCD might produce something approximating what the eye would see under typical Earth lighting conditions, but not under Martial conditions. Haven't you ever taken a photograph indoors and been disappointed at the poor color reproduction?
Those are false-color images. The real deal will be coming later.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
They're 2-filtered. Violet 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter. (As stated here.)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Yes, an always on power source in the megawatt range is to say the least tricky. The cooling system fails even once and you have a blob of permanently molten metal on your spacecraft instead.