Slashdot Mirror
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.
Can't imagine it's very live what with the lightspeed delay..
But then... what if they do find evidence of life? I mean large, complex forms of life, not some fossilized bacteria that everyone will debate and bitch about. That's what I'm hoping they dig up.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Ground stations no longer receiving signals because Earth was destroyed by a meteorite
That would really suck
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
... to those scientists that worked hard and put both heart and soul for at least a decade on Phoenix. I can't wait to see what images and data we get from Phoenix.
It's going to be an eventful summer here on Earth, that's for sure.
Great job, JPL & Arizona!
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Knowing some of the engineers that work on and manage these programs I am very happy with landing and everything it represents. More so I am looking forward to other robots, not the rover type but different task oriented machines like Robonaut and Chariot to make it off of Earth!
One day the world of robotics will have the answer.
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.
Years ago, we put vikings up on mars. The more amazing in that they were nuke powered. Now, we fight about it all the time. Even phoenix would be better served had it been nuke powered. But now, about half of the ppl do not want human systems going, another group fights sending nuke power up, and another wants NASA dead altogether. Back in the 60's and 70's, we all came together on saying that ALL of this was important; Long term robotic probes AND human missions AND the environment (as we understood it). It was not one vs. the other.
A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the reason for human missions to the moon was because of uranium/plutonium. Yet, ppl were upset about what a waste human missions were without realizing that we could fire up new MUCH LARGER missions to mars and elsewhere and let them use plutonium. I never bought off on W's idea that the moon would be a good launch pad based on the hydrogen that is there. But if we have LOADS of plutonium, that is a different matter. We can easily rail launch missions combined with large amount of energy via plutonium without worrying about it being spread all over the earth's atmosphere. Hopefully, at some point, Americans realize that one idea does not need to preclude another. For instance, human missions do not need to prevent robotics from going (or vs. versa).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Phoenix Mars Lander Touched Down 2 Hours ago
was I the only one who saw the phoenix project logo and thought it looked remarkably similar the Firefox logo? Firefox was originally called phoenix was it not? Coincidence? I think not!
Units.
Phoenix went exactly 423,000,000 miles at the leisurely pace of 20.7 miles a second.
Now if we had done something really COOL, like drive there in a Jeep Commander, we would have used 22,263,157 gallons of gas and been MUCH better prepared for Mars.
Someone will bitch about fuel cost. OK, look at this: at $4/gallon it would cost $108,972,294 -- that's $411,027,706 cheaper than this $520M "good deal". Jeep is currently offering a $2.99 gas lock-in which would bring the total savings to $453,433,160. I mean WOW, they could spend the rest on parties and just tell us it's really, really complicated.
Now ask if the Phoenix has 4 wheel drive. Or A/C. Or the peace of mind knowing it's fully covered under a manufacturer's warranty.
Tough to beat if you ask me..
Here are the photos it has taken so far.
http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7
I wish NASA wouldn't get so distracted during the "fun" part of these missions. It seems like a regular pattern, they set up frankly a pretty awesome web site, put up a countdown timer, plaster it with nice background articles and then update it very regularly ... until something happens. Then it's frozen in time for an hour or two (this time all they could come up with was "we got a signal") while they're all slapping each other five and pouring champagne into their consoles. The $420 million (or whatever it was) came out of our pockets, all I ask is that they get *one* intern to stay sober at the golden moment and clue in those of us who don't get the Science Channel.
Anyway it's great to see they pulled it off. It's weird how so many space shots worked on the first try and then we totally blew the next half-dozen tries. I blame the Martian strategic defense system.
The best thing they could possibly find would be a mars bar. It would be too funny if some NASA guy threw one in so that it would pop out on landing.
Would you have said the same thing to people inventing the sailing ship all those moons ago?
"Oh, other than the feeling of putting people on another country, what's the point?"
It's attitudes like this, that are so very narrow and shallow minded that cause people to become insular and think only of their own back yard in all affairs.
Other than the scientific achievements in doing this, there is the overall good it does to the human spirit to see ourselves as a race be able to conquer the distances, to think of a huge problem like this and surmount it with science.
If it encourages kids to do more in the way of science rather than religious persecution etc., I'm all for 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.
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.
Am I the only one who thinks it's ironic we are the ones putting 3 legged machines on Mars... ?
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.