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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.
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.
Here are the photos it has taken so far.
http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7
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/
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.
Like many scientific imagers, the camera on phoenix (called the surface stereo imager http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/science_ssi.php ) uses a filter wheel in front of a CCD. They have 12 filters picked specifically for geological and atmospheric interest. Presumably three of the filters roughly correspond to red, green and blue, so they can take an image through each filter and then composite them into a single color image. I assume they've just been posting the raw images taken through a given filter first and will composite them once they've got a set in. Note that your digital camera works in a similar way (takes images through three filters and composites them, it may place a permanent color filter array in front of the CCD, or use three separate CCDs and a beam splitter rather than using a spinning filter wheel), except it does the compositing automatically. Since the imager on phoenix will not be used exclusively for making RGB color images, there's no reason to have the camera automatically take images through those three filters and do the compositing. Also, it looks like many of the images they've taken first are of the solar arrays - I imagine they wanted to take quick single filter images of each array and send them back first over their limited bandwidth to see that they really deployed, before taking and transmitting a color panorama.