First Phoenix Images Return from MARS
“We rehearsed all of the problems, and none of them occurred,” Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein told reporters, clearly relieved at what appears to have been a nearly textbook landing. “One divergence from this was the opening of the lander’s parachute 7 seconds later than anticipated, a minor issue that simply prevented the probe from landing at the exact centre of its projected landing ellipse.”
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Once landed, the NASA Mars Phoenix lander has begun to transmit its first images back to Earth. Unfurling its solar panels for energy, the images are of the Martian’s northern plains—looking rather flat and unique looking in its landscape patterns that are similar to a quilt, “characterized by NASA as low bumps and shallow dips”. The solar panels allow the lander to survey longer than the estimated batter power length of 34 hours, so this is part of the mission that is highly important—with NASA figuring it is just as important as the mission itself.
When the Phoenix landed on the Martian surface, it landed with just a slight tilt of 0.25″ which is next to nothing, but if it had been more of a tilt the solar power energy would have been significantly less. When first landing, the lander opened its panels along an east-west axis to maximize power due to a pirouette maneuver when it descended—what NASA considered a textbook landing.
The Mars Odyssey had made a return pass over the Phoenix once it was determined as safe, with its images showing mission control the Phoenix’s “unfolded solar panels and one foot of the lander planted on the Martian surface”. After 15 minutes from landing, the Phoenix began to execute the sequences of images I had been trained to do, designed to help NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, access how it was doing.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 2:13 am and is filed under Space Agency News, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
