Comments on: How to land at the Martian north pole.

How to land at the Martian north pole.

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:22:55 -0800

Seven minutes of terror. A short video on describing how the Phoenix probe will land at the North Pole of Mars on May 25th. Follow updates to the mission via Twitter and the blog. Previously

By: WalterMitty

WalterMitty — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:41:47 -0800

This quote summed it up for me: Earth and Mars are so far apart that it takes over 10 minutes for a signal from Mars to get to Earth. And EDL itself is all over in a matter of 7 minutes. So by the time we even hear from the lander that EDL has started, it'll already be over. Absolutely fascinating post, and a very cool project. I hope it works out well.

By: chococat

chococat — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:46:47 -0800

Cool.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:47:52 -0800

Scary start there. For a second I was expecting the Phoenix probe to be some sort of flaming Greek rectal thermometer.

By: steef

steef — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:53:49 -0800

Essentially, it's the same gameplan as the Viking missions from 30 years ago, but holy crap there's a whole lot that can go wrong. Fingers and toes crossed!

By: mrhappy

mrhappy — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:01:13 -0800

I lurve JPL. Thanks for posting this.

By: pjern

pjern — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:12:15 -0800

This is just, well, badass. Yeah. I know it's not humans hanging their butts on the line, but still, when I think of the resources and human ingenuity expended to do this, I get a little goose-bumpy.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:56:10 -0800

You know, the fact that it('s human operators) use Twitter really excites me. I don't think the Twitter people really knew what they were creating - a short message abstraction layer - and I think they still don't know what people will do with it. I'm generally pretty web 2.0 cynical, but Twitter just makes me happy. Like when I was a kid and would lay in bed wishing for some sort of high-tech network that could link me up with all my friends in real time.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:38:11 -0800

Ok, I watched the video and came away thinking "yeah, right". Mars eats spacecraft, this looks like more fodder. Too complex, too many things to go wrong. The bouncing air-bag technique was pretty clever, it worked (twice), why not do it again, less development costs.

By: intermod

intermod — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:47:03 -0800

Oh man, I've been obsessed with this for too damn long now. Here's some interwebs badass-ness: Phoenix Mars Landing Real-Time Simulation http://www.dmuller.net/phoenix/ert.php (patience, server is really slow) Live chat on night of Phoenix EDL: irc://irc.freenode.net/space (you'll need an IRC client and a properly configured browser for that link to work, and even with the latter you probably will still have to manually connect) This is also a good place in general to hang out when critical results are coming back live from unmanned probes -- e.g. orbital insertion, atmospheric probes like Huygens, etc. The Phoenix forum at unmannedspaceflight.com: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showforum=14 Here's an entertaining Earth Mars Scorecard showing how good Mars has been over the past 45 years at eating the probes that we hurl at it: http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/fun/PSL/marsscorecard.html First powered descent since the late 1970's. 10 days to go!

By: intermod

intermod — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:49:28 -0800

The bouncing air-bag technique was pretty clever, it worked (twice), why not do it again, less development costs. It doesn't scale up enough. This is a much bigger spacecraft than the MERs (2004) or certainly Pathfinder (1997), and they can't make an airbag system big enough to withstand the impact. And you can only miniaturize the scientific instruments on this mission so much.

By: chimaera

chimaera — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:49:38 -0800

The bouncing air-bag technique was pretty clever, it worked (twice), why not do it again, less development costs. Probably the main reason Phoenix doesn't land with airbags is because when it (the lander, not necessarily all the instruments and other goodies inside) was originally designed and built in the late 90s, the largest thing we landed on Mars with airbags was a rover as big as a shoebox. When the solar arrays are deployed, it's easily bigger than the rovers, and though I don't know, I'm guessing that it's heavier, as it doesn't have to move itself around, so it can carry more instruments instead of a mobility system. My sister works on the Phoenix project (her bailiwick is command and telemetry) and will be there for EDL, and they've been rehearsing this for months. I really hope it goes well.

By: tachikaze

tachikaze — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:50:41 -0800

The bouncing air-bag technique was pretty clever, it worked (twice), why not do it again, less development costs as mentioned above, the aerobrake-parachute-retrorocket approach also has two successful landings on Mars. so, naturally, I was thinking throughout this video, 'yeah yeah you did this 32 years ago, what's the BFD now . . .'

By: tachikaze

tachikaze — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:52:15 -0800

the largest thing we landed on Mars with airbags was a rover as big as a shoebox The rover was bigger than a shoebox, plus also landed strapped down to its own "base station", which was rather not-small.

By: intermod

intermod — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:55:36 -0800

chimaera made the shoebox analogy in reference to when it "was originally designed and built in the late 90s". There's quite a bit of history on this mission, involving the failed Mars Polar Lander. Go dig.

By: 5MeoCMP

5MeoCMP — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:58:41 -0800

Very cool. This will be 9am local time for me, so I may actually get to "follow along" in real time for once. The text on that video is very Doom-ish. I hope they don't find any, err, "artifacts".

By: zippy

zippy — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:06:18 -0800

I wanted to enjoy the video in the first link, but I was distracted by the Battlestar-Galactica sound effects and editing. Is there a more straightforward version of the same video somewhere?

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:16:15 -0800

Cool post.

By: joeblough

joeblough — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:42:53 -0800

sorry zippy, jpl has been making animations like this for some time now. the opportunity/spirit mission simulation videos were much the same. if there is a long version somewhere, it may have fewer jump cuts but... this ain't your father's JPL/NASA! also 2nding the coolness factor of using twitter.

By: Dillonlikescookies

Dillonlikescookies — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:53:57 -0800

i was wondering how nasa was gonna "jazz things up" to try and keep appealing to the public in order to justify funding. so far so good eh?

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:03:07 -0800

Will the Lander be twittering live from Mars with status updates? Because if not, I'll probably just wait for Web 3.0.

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:13:21 -0800

A bit of a nitpick, but the bouncing airbag thing worked three times.

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:52:49 -0800

Nice article on all the things they changed to reduce risk. Also a window into the bureaucracy and tedious care required to pull this off. http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/phoenix/080512testing.html

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:04:16 -0800

speaking of martian poles...anybody catch these pix of the martian landslides taken a few months back? (click the main image for a poster sized shot of 4 simultaneous martian landslides, in context and close-up, from the hirise camera on the MRO)

By: MiltonRandKalman

MiltonRandKalman — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:20:56 -0800

I don't know who JPL contracted for the video production, but they got their money's worth.

By: chillmost

chillmost — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:21:21 -0800

Totally awesome. I want to be an astronaut. That said, this video would have been much more kick-ass with a narration from Don Lafontaine. In a world.....

By: chillmost

chillmost — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:35:40 -0800

By: intermod

intermod — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:15:48 -0800

It is very possible, and they are very careful to avoid that situation. Assembly is done in clean rooms. Years ago, at the end of its long mission, Galileo was commanded to plunge into Jupiter specifically to ensure that it never ever ever could possibly ever ever plow into Europa, which may harbor life. Biological contamination is taken very seriously by these guys.

By: octobersurprise

octobersurprise — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:49:30 -0800

I don't know who JPL contracted for the video production I dunno either, but they learned a lot from Jerry Bruckheimer. I'm amazed though, when I think of how we've gone from the days of Walter Cronkite broadcasting missions on one of three national television networks, to watching mission video by phone. Godspeed, Phoenix.

By: Guy_Inamonkeysuit

Guy_Inamonkeysuit — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:13:49 -0800

Goddam this is cool. Yes, Mars eats spacecraft, but still -- it never fails to amaze me that we can land anything successfully anywhere out there, much less send itty bitty spaceships out to slingshot around planets and go flying off into the nether reaches of the solar system with damn near pinpoint accuracy. I know it's all math and so on, but damn -- how cool is all this?! Go Phoenix!

By: JJ86

JJ86 — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:01:16 -0800

If NASA would hire more Hollywood production people to make a feature length film like this short then it wouldn't even matter about the lander. Actually I thought it was over-the-top done with the annoying style that discourages me from watching most TV dramas. Sudden zooms/pans and flashes are pathetic video devices.

By: kisch mokusch

kisch mokusch — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:32:16 -0800

I'm surprised that 90% of the footage was computer generated. Surely they have videos of it working in field tests (at least the freefall and self-guided reverse thruster stuff). Also add to above: Very cool.

By: kisch mokusch

kisch mokusch — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:08:48 -0800

Would it be possible that small amounts of microbes and bacteria hitched a ride to mars on the Phoenix and could survive and multiply either on the probe or in the area around it? I realize it is probably difficult due to the only trace amounts of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. But what if? The answer to the hitching-a-ride bit is yes, definitely possible. Long known, in fact, that certain bacterial spores are extremely hardy. I seriously doubt that they would activate and germinate on Mars, but I would think that, with regards to detecting evidence of life on Mars, the potential for contamination by earthly bacteria (and/or other forms of life) would be quite high.

By: JJ86

JJ86 — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:57:24 -0800

Generally satellites and landers are assembled in a clean-room environment. Clean rooms have filtered air and standards to prevent infiltration of most bad stuff. This is to prevent contamination from bacteria that may negatively affect the spacecraft during its operation as well as any stray dust particle or such object. While there may be a possibility of a microorganism attaching itself, the odds are extremely miniscule.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:34:21 -0800

You can help in the search for the 1999 Mars Polar Lander.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:34:33 -0800

It's almost there!

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:11:34 -0800

Lands at 4:38p PST (7:38 EST) tonight! We won't know for another 15 minutes, at least, however. According to the Phoenix on Twitter, it's about to pressurize its propellants. So cool! There's a NASA TV stream here, anyone know if it's going to be on cable?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:13:51 -0800

I felt a new post was warranted.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:20:07 -0800

Pressurizing complete!