The Phoenix Has Landed

Iddo Genuth writes "Precisely at 7:53PM EST, the "Phoenix Mars Lander" touched-down on the desert-like surface of Mars. Since its launch on August 4th, 2007, the spacecraft has covered more than 680,752,512 kilometers, traveling at average speeds of around 120,000 km/hr. Upon arriving at its destination, the Phoenix will begin its exploration of our intriguing neighbor planet, in a mission to help astronomers resolve at least some of the many questions regarding Mars. The key question remains: can the Red Planet support some form of life?" Hella grats to our nerd brethren — you looked great on the Science channel. Yes I'm watching this live. Can't wait to see what happens next.
Update: 05/26 03:0 GMT by KD : zof sends a link to the first pictures from Phoenix.

live

Can't imagine it's very live what with the lightspeed delay..

Re:live

Well, if you are going to be pedantic nothing is really live because relativity precludes true simultaneity. I think we all understand what he means.

All in all, it does my heart well to see such mainstream coverage of the event. My parents, who are sort of aloof to anything scientific, are even paying attention to it on the 24 hour news. It's these sort of things turning into moments that reach across all of society that inspire new generations of kids to become scientists.

Re:live

It's these sort of things turning into moments that reach across all of society that inspire new generations of kids to become scientists.

So they can shit bricks for 7 minutes as their billion-dollar experiment and paycheck hang in the balance? It's one thing to watch on CNN from the comfort of your big fluffy chair, but remember these people had their asses on the line. People lost their jobs when the Polar Lander crashed in the 90's.
       

Re:live

I can just see those guys' resumes:

Objective: Entry Level Food Server

Education:
Caltech, PhD in Astrophysics
MIT, Master of Science, Physics

Prior Experience:
Crash-landed a spacecraft on Mars.

Pictures

Here are the photos it has taken so far.

http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7 [arizona.edu]

Re:Pictures

Ha--it's taken a bunch of black-and-white photos of itself at odd angles. Are those for its MySpace page?

Re:Pictures

I made up a 3D image of the landing leg by combining two of the published pictures. You can clearly see a mount that formed that makes it look like the lander slid as it touched down. The first version is 3D if you cross your eyes, the second version requires red-blue 3D glasses:
http://img294.imageshack.us/my.php?image=phoenixlegstereoug5.jpg [imageshack.us]
http://i27.tinypic.com/24yyfix.jpg [tinypic.com]

Doesn't even have to be live life...

Personally, I think it would be damned cool if they found an indisputable fossil. It would force a whole lot of philosophical re-thinking, and probably give a huge-assed push towards getting humans into space (well, those who don't suddenly get scared silly and decide to crawl into a cave, hoping the aliens pass us by or somesuch).

But then... what if they do find evidence of life? I mean large, complex forms of life, not some fossilized bacteria that everyone will debate and bitch about. That's what I'm hoping they dig up.

/P

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

What are the chances of puttering around for a few hundred meters on earth and randomly finding a human skeleton?..

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

In my neighborhood? Pretty good.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

A human skeleton? Not very high. But any skeleton? In areas that used to be underwater, you often find fossilized imprints of shellfish, etc, every few inches.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

What are the chances of puttering around for a few hundred meters on earth and randomly finding a human skeleton?..

I was surprised when I found that Phoenix has no mobility. But then, I have thought about it for all of 5 minutes, while the NASA engineers have thought about it for 5 years, so there must have been a good reason to leave that feature out.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

The short answer, to keep inside the weight budget. When you add wheels, you need to compromise on the science instruments.

So Phoenix packs much better science gear than the rovers, and to compensate they just try to drop it somewhere uniform and with a decent chance of finding what you are looking for regardless of the specific drop point.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

Wikipedia has an estimate of the total number of people that has ever lived [wikipedia.org] at 45 billion to 125 billion people.

It also provides a map of population density in the world. Another article provides information on the surface area of the Earth. [wikipedia.org]

Approximately 29.2% of the surface is dry land. 13.31% of this land is arable, with only 4.71% supporting permanent crops.

148,940,000 km is dry land. (1.940 x 10^14 mÂ)

Assuming a buried person takes up 1 square metre.

Assume that there have been 120 billion skeletons buried all over the place (125 minus 5 billion still living).

Then you have 1.20 x 10^11 / (1.940 x 10^14 mÂ)

which gives 1.20 / 1.940 x 10^-3

or 0.000618556

6.18556 x 10^-3

So, you have a 1/1616 chance of finding a skeleton. Your odds will be affected by the cultural traditions of the local population, the local geology (limestone will dissolve bone). The natives might think twice about burying tribe members on farm land.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

That's what I'm hoping they dig up.

I'm hoping it finds Jimmy Hoffa. Or maybe the second gunman.

What gets me is...

all the work that went into the mission so far that made this look easy. It wasn't. But they did a helluva job on the prep work to make it look like business as usual.

Great job, JPL & Arizona!

Amazing how short sighted ppl are

Years ago, we put vikings up on mars. The more amazing in that they were nuke powered. Now, we fight about it all the time. Even phoenix would be better served had it been nuke powered. But now, about half of the ppl do not want human systems going, another group fights sending nuke power up, and another wants NASA dead altogether. Back in the 60's and 70's, we all came together on saying that ALL of this was important; Long term robotic probes AND human missions AND the environment (as we understood it). It was not one vs. the other.

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the reason for human missions to the moon was because of uranium/plutonium. Yet, ppl were upset about what a waste human missions were without realizing that we could fire up new MUCH LARGER missions to mars and elsewhere and let them use plutonium. I never bought off on W's idea that the moon would be a good launch pad based on the hydrogen that is there. But if we have LOADS of plutonium, that is a different matter. We can easily rail launch missions combined with large amount of energy via plutonium without worrying about it being spread all over the earth's atmosphere. Hopefully, at some point, Americans realize that one idea does not need to preclude another. For instance, human missions do not need to prevent robotics from going (or vs. versa).

Re:Amazing how short sighted ppl are

Hello, NASA engineer here. Look up the Mars Science Lander (MSL) mission being built at JPL (link below). Nuke powered and huge. Upgrade from the Vikings mission since it has WHEELS. Will launch in September 2009.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

Late Breaking News

Amidst of rumors of yet another invasion by the heinous creatures of the blue planet, the most Illustrious Council of Elders confirmed that another mechanical war machine recently landed successfully on the homeworld. K'breel, speaker for the Council, stressed that plans for defense were well underway:

Gentle Citizens, today my gelsacs frumple in anticipation of the successful counterattack on the two-eyed monsters of the blue planet. Our sources indicate that while their latest mechanical terror has an experimental weapon to bore into our colonies, it has landed far from our podhomes and will soon be destroyed by this zunok's unusually powerful dust storms. Victory against our enemies is near! Our scientists report that our climate disruptor probes are currently in full operation and will make the blue planet uninhabitable within the next 5 zon.

When dissenters questioned whether the warming of our enemy's planet was due to his own self-destructive habits or our weaponry, K'Breel ordered their gelsacs pierced on the spot.

Re:Late Breaking News

When dissenters questioned whether the warming of our enemy's planet was due to his own self-destructive habits or our weaponry, K'Breel ordered their gelsacs pierced on the spot.

Shit! Space is still no escape from stupid leaders.
   

Next story on Slashdot

Phoenix Mars Lander Touched Down 2 Hours ago

Mars bar

The best thing they could possibly find would be a mars bar. It would be too funny if some NASA guy threw one in so that it would pop out on landing.

Re:Can't wait to see what happens next.

Ground stations no longer receiving signals because Earth was destroyed by a meteorite

That would really suck

Re:did anyone else notice the logo?

But that is the logo for the lander [arizona.edu] though...

Re:Enormous congratulations to them all

Would you have said the same thing to people inventing the sailing ship all those moons ago?

"Oh, other than the feeling of putting people on another country, what's the point?"

It's attitudes like this, that are so very narrow and shallow minded that cause people to become insular and think only of their own back yard in all affairs.

Other than the scientific achievements in doing this, there is the overall good it does to the human spirit to see ourselves as a race be able to conquer the distances, to think of a huge problem like this and surmount it with science.

If it encourages kids to do more in the way of science rather than religious persecution etc., I'm all for it.