Phoenix Mars Lander Updates

spandex_panda writes "There are a few pictures of the Mars Lander on the ground — you can see its parachute and its heat shield a few kilometers away, too. There's a very cool looking picture of it floating down, actually captured while it's in the air with its parachute out!" We also have a YouTube video all about the robot arm that will dig down and probably find a groundhog who we all hope will see his shadow.

Comments

More Pictures at NASA Website

[peterd11]

I didn't see any link to the NASA site with the complete set of pictures: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/index.html

Re:False color?

[Ihlosi]

is the red color in these photos and the other Phoenix images the real color of the Mars surface (or at least an accurate reconstruction of what a human eye would see with ambient light there)

It's as close as you can get to reconstructing the real color from a series of monochrome images taken with different color filters.

or is it something NASA arbitrarily adds to impress viewers with notions about "the red planet"?

That Mars is pretty much reddish all over, with some white at the poles, can be easily verified from Earth with a telescope.

Re:hmm

[maxume]

Part of the descent was filmed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080527.html

Not quite what you want, but close.

Re:One thing that bothers me

[DerekLyons]

Landers such as the Phoenix use thrusters to come to a safe, soft landing. Don't these thrusters blow away a lot of the useful sand and soil they are trying to collect?

In the case of Phoenix, no - as the stuff NASA is interested in is a couple of inches down. At any rate, they use multiple small thrusters to minimize the amount of disturbance and contamination.
 
 

That is the true advantage of Spirit and Opportunity, not only did they use airbags instead of rockets, they could drive away from the disturbed landing site.

That advantage comes with a pair of powerful disadvantages: First, the airbag systems sharply limit the size of the probe - both in dimensions and in weight. Secondly, the airbag systems are heavy - they take up a higher percentage of the possible landed weight.

Re:so let me ask the question

[ChromaticDragon]

OK, class...

Today's lesson in Internet humor will discuss text-based simulations of real-life behavior.

Sometimes, it aids for delivery of humor to juxtapose two replies or comments together in such a way that one is hidden and the other is the official or formal one. A good example in common speech would be in Top Gun when the main character says one thing to the teacher and "coughs" a different response into his hand. The hidden, coughed, reply is shared with those nearby so they can share the deceit.

For the humor impaired, or non-human readers out there, humor is often a social construct of sharing the joke or hidden meaning. Get it?

A long time ago, before chat rooms or blogs, a common internet medium was a program called "talk". The primary difference of modes today was that each "talker" got half the screen and just typed away. You could type something and then backspace it away but the person on the other end would see the entire exchange. So they knew both the early response and the second.

"^H" is representative of Control-H which in several terminal types is basically backspace. When people now type one thing followed by a series of "^H" they are simulating this early behavior of "talk" or even earlier and more mundane habit of hiding a hidden response or comment (cough, cough).

Now, be sure to return next week (especially those semi-sentient programs out there) to tackle the more difficult topic of sarcasm.