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

hmm

[apodyopsis]

nah its when the real volume of pics from the surface arrive that it gets interesting. Once again we can start looking for wee little people fishing from the rocks...

See more... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3232035.ece

Shame they did not land near the other probes, then they could have filmed each other. Yes, I know that is scientifically pointless, but you have to admit it would have been cool.

On the same note I always thought that Spirit or Opportunity should have been sent to visit Beagle crater...

False color?

[Otter]

I asked this on the last story and got no responses so I'll try again...

This issue was discussed in a series of posts on the last Mars mission, that left me more confused than I was before: 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) or is it something NASA arbitrarily adds to impress viewers with notions about "the red planet"? Previous discussion focused more on whether the people complaining were or were not NASA-denialist kooks than on whether they were factually correct.

Re:First Mars Blooper Released by NASA

[antirelic]

So now that we have landed three consecutive probes on Mars, what is the next step?

What is keeping NASA and the ESA from working together to create a tiny habitat to send to mars? I'm not talking anything fancy. How about sending a plant to Mars and keeping it alive? You have all the challenges of putting a living organism into space, getting it to mars, landing it on mars, and getting a habitat inflated, powered up, and surviving, all without having to risk the life of a human being.

Think about it. Establishing green houses on mars, while a daunting task, will be incredibly valuable, and incredibly interesting. It will challenge our ability to remotely deploy and manage habitats, and provide the appearance of starting a human habitable colony on another world (even though scientists will know, and openly and repeatedly explain that it isnt, people will still come to that conclusion and be fascinated) without having to sacrifice human life.

All we need to do is start with just 1 little plant.

One thing that bothers me

[Thelasko]

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?

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.