Comments on: Phoenix to land on Mars.

Phoenix to land on Mars.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:13:29 -0800

Phoenix is set to land on Mars at 2353 UTC. Video coverage: NASA | CNN

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:13:34 -0800

Twitter | Blog Previously: How to land at the Martian north pole. by Brandon Blatcher The Phoenix rises. by backseatpilot

By: popcassady

popcassady — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:14:18 -0800

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:15:48 -0800

I've been watching for about the past half hour. I sure hope this one's successful.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:24:28 -0800

APOD had a cool animation of the landing featured today. The next half hour should be interesting.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:27:07 -0800

I liked the old thread! It's so cool that we have spacecraft in permanent orbit around Mars to relay signals.

By: Arturus

Arturus — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:33:59 -0800

The twitter feed is the best thing going on twitter right now.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:35:21 -0800

WolfDaddy: APOD had a cool animation of the landing featured today. As I watched that just now, I turned on the radio because CNN Int'l was showing commercials. Alanis Morissette was on, with Thank You. You know the one: The moment I let go of it Was the moment I got more than I could handle The moment I jumped off of it Was the moment I touched down And when that last line played, that was actually the moment it touched down, in the animation. So I guess Phoenix officially has Alanis's blessing, now.

By: kyrademon

kyrademon — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:35:36 -0800

Fingers crossed. If this works, it'll be the first successful propulsion-based landing on mars in about 30 years. I had friends working on this. They're a little tense right now.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:35:44 -0800

One of the things I'm curious about is why we need to land on rockets -- why not maintain the parachute all the way down as a backup system?

By: kyrademon

kyrademon — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:38:36 -0800

Incidentally, if it touched down successfully, it did so right ... about ... now. The news won't reach earth for another 15 minutes, though.

By: furtive

furtive — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:39:45 -0800

SpecialK: 'cause the wind can catch the parachute, and also because the parachute can detach, and finally because a parachute (much like the airbags) limits the weight of the payload.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:40:40 -0800

The twitter feed is the best thing going on twitter right now. Tell me about it: "Eating peanuts in mission control is a good luck tradition at JPL. Jars are being opened now! Wish I had some, too!" gnifti: that must have been some kinda cool synchronicity. Aaaaand separation complete! Yay!

By: furtive

furtive — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:40:46 -0800

^the parachute can fail to detach I should also add the parachute could cause problems coming down on the pheonix, which isn't supposed to move, am I right?

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:44:40 -0800

TV-wise the coverage on the Science Channel (and HD) is good.

By: Kronos_to_Earth

Kronos_to_Earth — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:48:12 -0800

Report of atmospheric entry...now.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:48:30 -0800

Thanks for the link, I love these events!

By: kyrademon

kyrademon — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:54:16 -0800

Touchdown!

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:54:47 -0800

!!!!!

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:55:23 -0800

YEEEAAH!

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:55:46 -0800

They nailed it! Congratulations to all involved. And DAMN those thrusters must have been powerful. The first couple thousand meters of landing just zoomed by, as soon as the thrusters kicked in, it's slowed WAYYYYYY down. Awesome.

By: popcassady

popcassady — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:55:49 -0800

Wow, that was tense! I apologise for my preemptive cynicism -- let the invasion continue!

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:55:56 -0800

I can't remember who said it, but someone on Metafilter expressed their amazement at space exploration by saying something like, "These people dedicate their lives to building impossible things - and they actually work". I'd like to echo that sentiment right now.

By: phyrewerx

phyrewerx — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:56:34 -0800

Phoenix has landed! Phoenix has landed! Thanks for the post and letting us share in the excitement!

By: bowline

bowline — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:57:28 -0800

That was a blast to watch.

By: 5MeoCMP

5MeoCMP — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:57:32 -0800

Woo! That was gripping stuff. Congratulations to all involved, can't wait to start seeing some of the science data come down.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:57:40 -0800

LOL, NASA, pics or it didn't happen.

By: Super Hans

Super Hans — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:57:47 -0800

thanks gntfi, I would have missed the video coverage otherwise. glad they didn't miss this time.

By: andeles

andeles — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:58:42 -0800

Thanks for posting this - I caught it just at the right time! It's amazing to me that events like this are so accessible now, and I'm glad to have witnessed the landing!

By: MikeKD

MikeKD — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:59:19 -0800

Nerdgasm!

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:59:53 -0800

Yesss!

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:01:00 -0800

Wow. I too caught it at just the right time. Thanks. This stuff is amazing.

By: Tube

Tube — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:01:26 -0800

I'm glad the mission control guys wore blue shirts. 'Cause if they wore red shirts...

By: jasper411

jasper411 — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:01:42 -0800

Yay! Go Phoenix!!!

By: Servo5678

Servo5678 — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:02:34 -0800

We did it!!! Well, not us personally, but someone did it. It was done. It was done!!!

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:02:40 -0800

Watching the mission control reminded me of watching the dudes back on the aircraft carrier while Tom Cruise flew in Top Gun.

By: crapmatic

crapmatic — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:03:03 -0800

Phoenix is set to land on Mars at 2353 UTC. Boo for making this FPP at 2313 UTC. If I checked MeFi every 45 minutes I might have made a note to catch this on NASA TV.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:03:26 -0800

Dammit I spent the last 10 minutes trying to get the plug-ins installed. Ahhhhhh

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:09:31 -0800

I can't remember who said it Ah, it was Pastabagel, albeit in a slightly different context.

By: stavrogin

stavrogin — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:11:10 -0800

NASA must have offered themselves, and accepted, the extended warranty.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:11:33 -0800

This is so good, it's like when the rovers landed, waiting for the first pix!

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:11:54 -0800

Which is 1 ,5 hours from now from what I have understood

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:12:03 -0800

What's interesting is that the event must have actually happened a half hour (or much longer) ago, and they're actually just getting telemetry and data back now. Also, metafilter is taking forever to load...

By: schwa

schwa — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:52:48 -0800

Oh come on, it's totally obvious they faked this landing. Those photos they haven't released yet are obviously photoshopped.</conspiracytheorypremption>

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:55:52 -0800

What's annoying is I currently live in Florida, less than four hours from Cape Canaveral, and Cox cable here doesn't carry NASA TV.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:05:13 -0800

Ok, that was cool. Can we send ~~another one~~ a dozen more now?

By: sonic meat machine

sonic meat machine — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:13:38 -0800

Why are we sending Phoenix? I was hoping for the entirety of Alabama.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:55:20 -0800

We have cameras.

By: steef

steef — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:57:10 -0800

It kinda looks like Kansas.

By: Poolio

Poolio — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:00:40 -0800

CNN coverage of the landing at JPL

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:00:53 -0800

Pictures! From Mars!

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:14:35 -0800

Image from our advance scout, in preparation for invasion.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:16:49 -0800

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? Are we or they Lords of the World? And how are all things made for man? - Kepler (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:17:10 -0800

Picture gallery.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:31:17 -0800

What the fuck is this weird metal thing on my roof? Damnit, it totally melted my ice garden!

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:46:35 -0800

GOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:51:54 -0800

Maybe we should have sprung for a color camera. couldn't resist

By: lord_wolf

lord_wolf — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:54:20 -0800

Ultra, ultra awesome to see something from our planet casting a shadow on soil that my feet will never know. Science is cool.

By: BillsR100

BillsR100 — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:56:16 -0800

Watched the whole thing live on several we sites. Congrats to the JPL team. Good job!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:12:28 -0800

Maybe we should have sprung for a color camera. usually they have a bunch of color filters to look at different parts of the spectrum. They can combine those to produce true-color images.

By: Avenger

Avenger — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:16:38 -0800

Something about this picture just says "History" to me. I dont know why.

By: intermod

intermod — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:27:27 -0800

I guess now we've got 12 wheels plus 3 feet on Mars. I've been following this mission closely since before launch last August, and it's nice to see the excitement in the general population.

By: gemmy

gemmy — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:54:58 -0800

I watched the landing, then played some TF2 while waiting for the pics to come in. It was absolutely amazing that the whole thing went off without a hitch. To see brand new pictures from another planet always gives me the chills. Good job, NASA guys and gals for getting it up there. Five years of work and everything going off without a single problem must feel just fantastic. Now let's see what the Arizona crew can find!!

By: Count

Count — Sun, 25 May 2008 21:07:39 -0800

Yo did anyone notice the nametag that said Fuk Li in the NASA hq footage? It's right at the back near where Colonel Sanders is standing. Pretty unfortunate.

By: sdodd

sdodd — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:27:05 -0800

I just got done watching the final press conference for today. It sounds as though the landing was almost perfect. They "nulled out" the craft's horizontal velocity astonishingly well -- about 0.15 m/s at touchdown. Just a minute earlier the craft was traveling across Mars at highway speeds, and significant down-range velocity could have resulted in skidding, tipping, banging, or worse. Also, they were able to communicate with the craft during the landing, which wasn't strictly necessary but I'm sure made everybody in the command center a bit more relaxed than it would have been if they hadn't been getting updates. Initial data suggests the rockets and radar performed better than expected from simulations. Sounds like they got lucky with the terrain. The lander is almost perfectly level and isn't sitting on any rocks. There's no discernible dust on the solar arrays, which is great news for longevity of the mission -- they're in good shape, electrical power-wise. They're right next to the "areological" features they're most interested in, which is good news because it means the lander didn't need wheels after all! They ended up a bit further downrange than they expected, but still within their estimates. All those engineers and scientists did a great job, I'm so pleased for them. I hope they can get some sleep tonight.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:36:53 -0800

This is a milestone of an interesting sort. Previously, of 37 launched missions to Mars, only 18 succeeded -- a success rate of 48.64%. With Phoenix, humanity has now reached 19 successes of 38 missions total, for a rate of exactly 50%. Yay us! We've reached flip of a coin reliability! For NASA alone, the rate has moved from 12 of 17 launched for 71% to 13 of 18, or 72.2%. For landers, though, the rate has moved from 5/6 (83%) to 6/7 (86%). One of the things I'm curious about is why we need to land on rockets Well, there is no one foolproof way to land on Mars. But NASA understands rockets pretty well, and they have pretty much a binary failure behavior -- either they work or they don't. Parachutes and airbags have a variety of other failure modes. They were mainly tried as cost-saving experiments during the "faster, better, cheaper" era following the Observer loss, when NASA tried to spam Mars with spacecraft instead of big all-in-one missions. Rockets are a bit more expensive but apparently loads more reliable.

By: tachikaze

tachikaze — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:54:08 -0800

Something about this picture just says "History" to me. I remember the landings from 32 years ago, so this is more "back to the future" for me. Hopefully this time they won't get ambiguous readings on the biological tests. THAT newsflash back in 1976 forms one of my first distinct newsy memories.

By: kyrademon

kyrademon — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:10:22 -0800

Sdodd -- No rest for the scientists tonight. Once it landed successfully, someone I know who is working on it started a shift that will not end until 8 AM tomorrow morning.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:21:13 -0800

Yo did anyone notice the nametag that said Fuk Li in the NASA hq footage? It's right at the back near where Colonel Sanders is standing. Pretty unfortunate. Unfortunate because the average emotional age of people who are interested in the exploration of space is approximately 12? Is that what you're trying to tell us? Yo, dawg, I didn't notice because I was too busy snickering when they talked about penetrating the atmosphere. Geddit? Penetration.

By: bruzie

bruzie — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:48:12 -0800

A poster on Slashdot put together this cross-eyed 3D pic of the leg piccys...

By: puzzler

puzzler — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:09:58 -0800

For those who want inside info, Unmanned Spaceflight is a BB run and updated by people in the space industry, thus being a great site for frequent updates and discussion about space related topics. Their forum on Phoenix can be found here.

By: Dillonlikescookies

Dillonlikescookies — Mon, 26 May 2008 02:59:13 -0800

congrats nasa. hope you get a nice big chunk of funding next budget, you earned it.

By: From Bklyn

From Bklyn — Mon, 26 May 2008 03:14:10 -0800

So, pictures of little green men yet? C'mon, let's get on it people! Stat! Little green men dancing around in front of the camera's. I don't care if they look like paramcium, I got a hundred million tax dollars and ten months of waiting invested in this thing. At the very least, I want some Martian Pops! Fuck interplanetary travel is slow. How they hell are we gonna take over the universe at this rate?

By: veedubya

veedubya — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:37:05 -0800

In this picture, there seems to be a metallic pointy object in the distance. Is that an artifact of the camera, or a piece of the lander?

By: steef

steef — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:51:12 -0800

The Mars Photojournal page has approximate-color images up.

By: popcassady

popcassady — Mon, 26 May 2008 06:06:17 -0800

Is that an artifact of the camera, or a piece of the lander? Most likely, it's the heat shield (or so I have read).

By: triv

triv — Mon, 26 May 2008 06:12:10 -0800

This is awesome. At least our generation gets to feel a little like it might have felt to have been alive during the 60s.

By: Atreides

Atreides — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:29:34 -0800

Nifty 3d image. I always get very excited over landing missions. They're just something intrinsically neat about landing evidence of man on another planet.

By: WalterMitty

WalterMitty — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:48:19 -0800

Huzzah! When are they sending the first colonists? I hope it's within my lifetime.

By: stargell

stargell — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:09:22 -0800

This is awesome. At least our generation gets to feel a little like it might have felt to have been alive during the 60s. Hopefully we'll all be around to watch footage of the first person setting foot on Mars. Bet it's a woman.

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:04:02 -0800

In this picture, there seems to be a metallic pointy object in the distance. Is that an artifact of the camera, or a piece of the lander? Everyone knows that Mars is where Jesus lives. Or, where Jesus used to live. It's the metallic Mars Robot Jesus clone that the Legacy Machines made in preparation for the Rapture 2.0 launch (Rapture 1.0's heat shield came apart at 25,000 ft over Madagascar in 1827. WIKIPEDIA NEVER BELIEVES ME.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:10:59 -0800

Wow! There's something really cool about seeing one spacecraft from another, like the shots of the shuttle from the ISS, but to see a lander parachuting down to another freaking planet, well, that's just awesome.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:36:07 -0800

Whoa, bondcliff, that is very, very impressive.

By: ericb

ericb — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:13:20 -0800

The Mars Photojournal page has approximate-color images up. NASA has also posted the "false color" images (..."inferred from two color filters, a violet, 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter.") -- 1, 2.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:13:56 -0800

...late in the fifth decade, perennial underdog, Earth, evens the score with Mars at 20-all. Something of a junior in the Solar league, this historic occasion marks Earth's first head above water ever. Is this just a lucky break or has Earth finally turned the corner on planetary spaceflight? I'm sure we'll all be watching on 4 February 2009 to find out...

By: humannaire

humannaire — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:05:41 -0800

Man, this is so good, even a day later I stopped reading the thread and went out and got snacks. The excitement of the early space program is absent to a large degree, but the importance of this event in the near-future is ridiculously enormous. Right now I'm reading Stross' Accelerando, so I am right into looking at this event in that light: Meat traveling to dumb matter. Yet, regardless, this gets me all excited at some level that is closer to who I actually am then any knee-jerk reaction to another day-to-day story on the news about crisis, disaster, conflict, or product. This is space for real and it's us off-planet! Gosh! Is there anything better than this?

By: y2karl

y2karl — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:37:37 -0800

On an ancillary note, here, from a Mars Orbiter High Resolution Image Science Experiment shot taken on May 4, 2008, is a close up of the ice polygons characteristic of the landing site terrain. Now, is that not the geekiest floor pattern of all time or what?