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

[Brian Gordon]

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

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

[Anonymous Coward]

In my neighborhood? Pretty good.

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

[badmanone]

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.

Uh, only then we would be forced to worship that life's crystal skeletons...

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

[iminplaya]

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

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

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

[Duhavid]

And one of them has something identifying him as "John Carter".

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

[servognome]

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

That would really suck

The Phoenix Has Landed

[iminplaya]

Oh yeah... We all heard that [ufos-aliens.co.uk] before.

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

[SnowZero]

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

Pretty good if you touch down at a well chosen landing site. You just need to find the Martian equivalent of the Manson ranch, or an empty lot with disturbed soil near the Martian Mafia. Given the planet's drying history, there would have been a lot of drifters, and similarly criminals to prey upon them.

Some people say I've been reading to much Heinlein lately...

Late Breaking News

[freefrag]

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.

Next story on Slashdot

[teh moges]

Phoenix Mars Lander Touched Down 2 Hours ago

In English...

[Anonymous Coward]

Units.

Phoenix went exactly 423,000,000 miles at the leisurely pace of 20.7 miles a second.

Now if we had done something really COOL, like drive there in a Jeep Commander, we would have used 22,263,157 gallons of gas and been MUCH better prepared for Mars.

Someone will bitch about fuel cost. OK, look at this: at $4/gallon it would cost $108,972,294 -- that's $411,027,706 cheaper than this $520M "good deal". Jeep is currently offering a $2.99 gas lock-in which would bring the total savings to $453,433,160. I mean WOW, they could spend the rest on parties and just tell us it's really, really complicated.

Now ask if the Phoenix has 4 wheel drive. Or A/C. Or the peace of mind knowing it's fully covered under a manufacturer's warranty.

Tough to beat if you ask me..

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

[maxume]

It'd only take like 4.5 inches of said water.

Mars bar

[personalo]

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:live

[inKubus]

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.

The Hell?

[Ihmhi]

Did they launch this thing before color photography was invented?

Re:Pictures

[superdana]

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

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

[cleatsupkeep]

Maybe it should go back to how it was :-).

Re:Mars bar

[Joe the Lesser]

Even funnier would be an 'Earth Bar'.

Earth Attacks!

[kegon]

Am I the only one who thinks it's ironic we are the ones putting 3 legged machines on Mars... ?

"real" scientific advancement

[martyb]

Define what a "real" scientific advancement would be, please.

That's EASY! Take something "complex" [wikipedia.org] and remove just the "imaginary" part. ;^)

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

[PhxBlue]

But where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!

Neat Pictures

[PPH]

Particularly this [arizona.edu] one. I can make out the flag on the next green, just below the horizon. It looks like a PAR 3 with a 7-iron.

Re:live

[noidentity]

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

That's just so any Martian profanity can be edited out by the FCC before it reaches America.

Re:Amazing how short sighted ppl are

[caluml]

Just think! If you had an account, you'd have 5 Karma points now. That'd give you something interesting to talk about no, rather than boring the people down the pub with nuclear powered rocket this, space travel, that, and aliens on Mars the other. :)

Re:live

[somersault]

His credentials are ofcourse amazing

Yes, Metallic even wrote a song about him - originally called "Master of Puppets (and other r/c craft)". It included a prophetic diatribe from him to the spacecraft as it wound its way towards Mars:

Needlework the way, never you betray
Line of death becoming clearer
Pain monopoly, ritual misery ...

Speak to me!
Hell is worth all that, natural habitat
Just a rhyme without a reason
Neverending phase, Drift on numbered days
Now your life is out of season
I will occupy
I will help you die
I will run through you
Now I rule you too

Hell is obviously a reference to Mars, the Red Planet, which we are going to one day turn into an earth-like habitat. Looks like his constant jibing and nay-saying of the Phoenix has paid off anyway, as it has given it a steely resolve to prove him wrong and survive in such a lonely situation.

Excuse me while I sip some more of my special coffee.

Re:Pictures

[neoform]

Sorry to correct you, but the reason everything looks sepia on mars is actually because there's a time warp between earth and mars, the lander is actually back in the 1950s.

Re:Pictures

[TheQuantumShift]

God. Dammit.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=228164083 [myspace.com]

I just had to look...