Phoenix Mars Lander: Mission ends after 125 Sols

[HURAKAN]

Phoenix Raw Image
This is a raw, or unprocessed, image taken by the Phoenix lander on Mars, May 25, 2008. This is a screen grab taken from NASA TV.

Link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoen ... index.html

[JonathanBelles]

There are 3 more on NASA.gov now up.

[JonathanBelles]

After looking though the images, I had to change my avatar to one of the many stunning images.

[lurkey]

[HURAKAN]

Interestingly the pictures show a plain without craters. Lucky place to land.

[x-y-no]

Interestingly the pictures show a plain without craters. Lucky place to land.

That was carefully planned. They picked the landing area for its lack of rocks and craters.


That polygon pattern looks like frost heaving to me. That implies ground saturated with water and periodic melting/refreezing. If that turns out to be true it's a pretty exciting result. I would have expected a permanently frozen landscape at that latitude.

[JonathanBelles]

excerpt from NASA yesterday:

"We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we see the polygons that we saw from space, we don't see ice on the surface, but we think we will see it beneath the surface. It looks great to me," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission.

[lurkey]

Interestingly the pictures show a plain without craters. Lucky place to land.

That was carefully planned. They picked the landing area for its lack of rocks and craters.


That polygon pattern looks like frost heaving to me. That implies ground saturated with water and periodic melting/refreezing. If that turns out to be true it's a pretty exciting result. I would have expected a permanently frozen landscape at that latitude.

I saw a quote from the BBC saying it looked similar to permafrost areas in the Arctic.

[lurkey]

Interestingly the pictures show a plain without craters. Lucky place to land.

That was carefully planned. They picked the landing area for its lack of rocks and craters.


That polygon pattern looks like frost heaving to me. That implies ground saturated with water and periodic melting/refreezing. If that turns out to be true it's a pretty exciting result. I would have expected a permanently frozen landscape at that latitude.

This picture released on May 26, 2008 by NASA shows a polygonal pattern in the ground near NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, similar in appearance to icy ground in the arctic regions of Earth. Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53 p.m. Eastern Time) on May 25, 2008, in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude. This is an approximate-color image taken shortly after landing by the spacecraft's Surface Stereo Imager, inferred from two color filters, a violet, 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter. (AFP/Getty Images / May 26, 2008)

more pics here

[HURAKAN]

Phoenix Makes a Grand Entrance
05.26.08 -- NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[HURAKAN]

In the news press at 2 PM ET it was mentioned that new pictures were expected to arrive tonight.

[JonathanBelles]

I was just on there, and the images are there, but they are 404'd. SO to me it looks like they are putting them up now.

[HURAKAN]

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.

From a distance of about 760 kilometers (472 miles) above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 10-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but correspond to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.

Phoenix released its parachute at an altitude of about 12.6 kilometers (7.8 miles) and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound.

The HiRISE acquired this image on May 25, 2008, at 4:36 p.m. Pacific Time (7:36 p.m. Eastern Time). It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoen ... ander.html

[x-y-no]

Phoenix Makes a Grand Entrance
05.26.08 -- NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Now that's really cool!

(OK, I confess I'm a NASA geek)

[JonathanBelles]

I wonder if Spirit or Opportunity got anything?

[HURAKAN]

I wonder if Spirit or Opportunity got anything?

Anything of what?

[JonathanBelles]

I wonder if Spirit or Opportunity got anything?

Anything of what?

lol....pictures of Phoenix

[JonathanBelles]

More images are up including one thats 3D!

[HURAKAN]

This image mosaic was acquired by the surface stereo imager left instrument of the Phoenix spacecraft on the surface of Mars. It was taken between 2008-05-26T22:08:17.393 and 2008-05-26T22:32:18.515 local time. This mosaic is presented in a cylindrical-perspective projection.

[JonathanBelles]

Here's the whole....VERY large image.