33 replies to this topic

[Cyberbrain]

I just saw on CNN, the Phoenix has landed!

[Cyberbrain]

http://www.nasa.gov/...s/phoenix/main/

[forever freedom]

Very nice. Not that mars researches interest me much (at least after we found out that mars had a very near to 0 chance of having green little men), but now and then some nice discoveries from earth's old and crippled brother happen.

[Cyberbrain]

Very nice. Not that mars researches interest me much (at least after we found out that mars had a very near to 0 chance of having green little men), but now and then some nice discoveries from earth's old and crippled brother happen.

Well thanks to Spirit, Opportunity and the Orbiters we now know that mars once had water. Now, for the first time, with Phoenix we will be able to exam that water (which is now underground) to see if we can discover any alien microbes. Overall, along with technological and biological advances, I think it is equally important to pursue interests in space. It made me very excited to see Phoenix touch down perfectly.

What mars might have looked like once:

[Cyberbrain]

Mars probe touches down

The US space agency Nasa has landed a spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

The Mars Phoenix lander touched down late on Sunday GMT in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680-million-km (423-million-mile) journey from Earth.

The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.

Scientists say the mission should give the clearest indication yet of whether the planet could once have harboured primitive life.

The Phoenix lander reached the surface of Mars at 2353 GMT on 25 May (1953 EDT; 0053 BST on 26 May).

The final seven minutes of the probe's ten-month journey were regarded as the riskiest part of the mission.

After it entered the top of the Martian atmosphere at nearly 21,000km/h (13,000 mph), the probe had to perform a series of manoeuvres to come safely to rest.

It released a parachute, used pulsed thrusters to slow to a fast walking speed, then descended the last few metres to the Martian soil.

Engineers and managers at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California clapped and cheered when landing was confirmed.

"Phoenix has landed - welcome to the northern plain of Mars," a flight controller announced.

In the next few hours, if all goes to plan, Phoenix will open its solar arrays and begin powering its batteries for the three-month science mission.

It will use a robotic arm to dig through the protective Martian topsoil and lift samples of both soil and ice to its deck for scientific analysis.

Building blocks

Dr Tom Pike of Imperial College, London, is part of the British team involved in the project.

"The main goal of the mission is to get below the surface of Mars to where we are almost certain there is water," he told BBC News.

"The orbiters that are around Mars have already surveyed in great detail the area in which we are landing and we know that there is ice - solid water - 10cm, or maybe even less, below the surface.

"Water, of course, is of critical importance because it is one of the building blocks - one of the essential habitats we need - for life."

Landing on Mars is a notoriously tricky business. Of the 11 previous attempts to land probes on Mars since 1971 - only five have succeeded.

Phoenix is an apt name for the current mission, as it rose from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

Phoenix uses hardware from an identical twin of MPL, the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled following the two consecutive failures.

The probe was launched on 4 August 2007 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/7411113.stm

[Cyberbrain]

[JohnDoe1234]

NASA, you're the man!

[Cyberbrain]

The first images:

[forever freedom]

Very nice. Not that mars researches interest me much (at least after we found out that mars had a very near to 0 chance of having green little men), but now and then some nice discoveries from earth's old and crippled brother happen.

Well thanks to Spirit, Opportunity and the Orbiters we now know that mars once had water. Now, for the first time, with Phoenix we will be able to exam that water (which is now underground) to see if we can discover any alien microbes. Overall, along with technological and biological advances, I think it is equally important to pursue interests in space. It made me very excited to see Phoenix touch down perfectly.

What mars might have looked like once: [images]

yes that's why i said that some nice discoveries are made now and then in mars. studying it allows us to know more about earth and maybe even about earth's future.

And discovering (and hopefully being able to study) alien microbes or other organisms, as simple as they may be, would be awesome..

Edited by sam988, 26 May 2008 - 03:29 AM.

[VictorBjoerk]

Does anybody want to speculate when the first bemanned expedition will go to Mars.Is it something that will be done in a few decades?

[platypus]

Does anybody want to speculate when the first bemanned expedition will go to Mars.Is it something that will be done in a few decades?

Isn't the normal timeframe somewhere in the 2030's? Anyway, people should found a permanent moon-base first...

[digfarenough]

Kostas: Nice thread!

Does anybody want to speculate when the first bemanned expedition will go to Mars.Is it something that will be done in a few decades?

Well, Dr. Robert Zubrin has had an inexpensive plan to quickly get to Mars for a long time (good documentary on it: http://www.themarsunderground.com/). Unfortunately, Zubrin is... well, he comes across as sort of crazy. He's got a good sounding plan, but he is really hurting it by being the spokesman for it. The clever part of his plan (and plans like it) is that you first send 1-2 unmanned missions carrying living quarters and equipment to manufacture oxygen and fuel (for the return home) from Mars' own natural resources. That greatly lightens the load for the manned trip and lets you make sure that that equipment survives before sending people.

But his plan is not being used and the current NASA plan is to have a manned mission in the not-so-near future (by the mid-to-late 2030s, I believe). Zubrin would also point out how wasteful their plan is, doing things like first building a station on the moon to use as a jumping off point, which uses far more fuel than going directly to Mars and obviously slows down the whole thing because of the construction job needed on the Moon.

I think some group in Europe also has plans for a manned mission to Mars by 2030 or so. So that seems to be the timeframe that the people with the money are going for.

[forever freedom]

Yea a manned mission to mars would likely only happen after 2030. Let's not even start talking about when mars colonies will be built...

Edited by sam988, 26 May 2008 - 06:12 PM.

[Richard Leis]

 PSP_008591_2485_cut_b.jpg   120.41KB   46 downloads

Taken by HiRISE some 300 km above. The solar panels showed up well in our Blue-Green filter and turned out great in our false color images.

[Richard Leis]

 PSP_008579_9020_descent.jpg   702.59KB   55 downloads

Taken about 20 seconds after parachute deployment, 3 seconds after heat shield separated (we are still trying to determine if some speck in the image might actually be the falling heat shield.)

[Cyberbrain]

Ice discovered on Mars:



http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/7431264.stm

[forever freedom]

Nice. Being a scientist working on NASA now must be really exciting because Phoenix is still to uncover so much stuff about Mars.

Edited by sam988, 02 June 2008 - 04:33 PM.

[VictorBjoerk]

Fantastic pictures!... Yes overall I think working at NASA would be very exciting

[forever freedom]

Mar's latest image. Mars' soil under the microscope.




One question, how do to post pictures here directly?

[Heliotrope]

like a phoenix, i hope mars experiences "rebirth' of life, the good kind, we may need to colonize it when population nears carrying capacity on earth

Edited by HYP86, 15 June 2008 - 01:45 AM.

[Luna]

How long does it take to get to mars with today's technology? 11 months?

[VictorBjoerk]

It takes about 6 months to get to Mars under good circumstances....Most sources seem to agree with that....

[Heliotrope]

did the Phoenix take nearly a year to fly to mars? when will be the first manned mission there? land a human on mars and set up colonies, when sun goes red giant and gobbles up earth , ok the sun's mass by that pt may not be enough to suck in earth but mars should be able to escape, how about we turn a planet into a vehicle and drive it around the universe?

Edited by HYP86, 24 June 2008 - 12:56 AM.

[Live Forever]

One question, how do to post pictures here directly?

Just use the regular image tags.

For example:



Would yield:





Yes, I used beer as an example; So sue me.

[forever freedom]

Ok thanks.

[Shannon Vyff]

this was cool, if anyone here follows much twitter : http://m.twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

but it will be exciting to see what is in the ice : http://science.slash...8/06/22/2135223 (that is totally why the life on Mars thread got me )

[VictorBjoerk]

Is it really water or frozen carbon dioxide btw?

[Luna]

Is it really water or frozen carbon dioxide btw?

In the link from Shannon:

Some readers have asked, how do we know the white substance is not frozen CO2 (dry ice) instead of frozen water? Answer: Phoenix's landing site is too warm for dry ice. The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F.

[freethinker]

Photographic proof of water on mars!

http://apod.nasa.gov...d/ap050401.html

[Heliotrope]

carbon dioxide ice huh? let's find the H2O kind. btw , above post was ffunny! glass of water photographed on mars bar