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Phoenix Mars Lander

AndrewAndrew
edited May 2008 in Technology
Is anyone else as interested in the Phoenix Mars Lander as much as I am?
The goal of the mission is this:
The Phoenix Mission has two bold objectives to support these goals, which are to (1) study the history of water in the Martian arctic and (2) search for evidence of a habitable zone and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary.
It landed about a week ago and there have already been some awesome pictures sent back. Here are a few of them:
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Comments

  • RochelleRochelle
    I'm very interested in seeing the results of this mission and if they find any possible habitable zones. Do you think if they did find habitable zones, it would lead to further study and push for human habitation on Mars?
  • Double ZDouble Z
    I've been following the Phoenix's Twitter these days, everything is awesome. I even started to read a pdf with all the vehicle's specs. It would be a dream job for me to help build a robot like that one.
  • JasonJason
    Get your ass to Mars.
  • AndrewAndrew
    Get your ass to Mars.
    We need to get our collective asses to Europa. That moon has a good chance that it's harboring life.
  • StarfoxStarfox
    I think a lot of people don't realize how amazing this is.
  • JasonJason
    Get your ass to Mars.
    We need to get our collective asses to Europa. That moon has a good chance that it's harboring life.
    Go read 2010 and 2069 by Arthur C. Clarke.
  • NeitoNeito
    MarsPhoenix.
  • HungryJoeHungryJoe
    Get your ass to Mars.
    We need to get our collective asses to Europa. That moon has a good chance that it's harboring life.
    I'm more interested in Europa than Mars at this point, but Mars is a lot closer.
  • SailSail
    Pareidolia, anyone?
  • JasonJason
    Pareidolia, anyone?
    We're not talking about the crazy-ass "bigfoot lives on Mars" crap. There is a good chance there is life on Europa because it produces a lot of geothermal heat and possibly large quantities of water under its surface ice. That could theoretically allow life to develop there even though Europa is so far from the sun.
  • SailSail
    I wasn't suggesting that.
  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    There were only four people in my whole family who were excited about this: Me, My dad, and his two cousins who work at JPL. Everyone else was like "So?" while I was jumping up and down as it landed.
  • ΣπεκωσποκΣπεκωσποκ
    Man. I saw those photos and all I could think about was how barren the planet is, and how much it would suck and be really cool at the same time to live there/be on a mission there.
  • AprecheApreche
    The pictures from this thing are amazing. Every past lander that has taken pictures on Mars has had a crummy camera. All the photographs came out looking like 1970's TV shows with a gray haze over everything. This new one the pictures actually appear to have true colors. I was blown away.
  • NeitoNeito
    The pictures from this thing are amazing. Every past lander that has taken pictures on Mars has had a crummy camera. All the photographs came out looking like 1970's TV shows with a gray haze over everything. This new one the pictures actually appear to have true colors. I was blown away.
    Apparently, that's why they went for the rocket slowed/parachute landing rather than the airbag landing. You can land more weight with that, and thus stuff more cool stuff onto the lander.
  • RedShirtRedShirt
    Is that a CD on the lander in the first picture?

    Re. the colors, my understanding is that it is a black and white camera, and that they use filters to get the colors. It's not a true color camera. I don't know for sure if we've sent a color camera up. I seem to remember some color scales on a previous lander that was used to calibrate the camera (but still don't know if it was color).
  • AndrewAndrew
    Is that a CD on the lander in the first picture?
    Yes. It contains messages from people like Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke for future martian explorers. It also stores a list of names gathered on the Internet.
  • AndrewAndrew
    ICE!! They found it! Right underneath the lander!
    image
  • chaosof99chaosof99
    Is it possible that water leaked out of the lander?
  • SailSail
    Is it possible that water leaked out of the lander?
    I think that if there was ANY opening or tear in the lander they would be having much bigger problems.
  • TheWhaleSharkTheWhaleShark
    Is it possible that water leaked out of the lander?
    According to NASA, the thrusters blasted away some dust, exposing the ice.

    This is some exciting stuff.
  • AndrewAndrew
    edited June 2008
    Is it possible that water leaked out of the lander?
    Liquid water freezes and then sublimates on the surface. The reason, they think, that this ice hasn't is because it's been covered by dust until it was blown off by the thrusters.
    Post edited by Andrew on
  • ......
    ICE!! They found it! Right underneath the lander!
    image
    And why is that picture gray all of the sudden!?

    Awesome findings though.
  • AndrewAndrew
    edited May 2008
    And why is that picture gray all of the sudden!?
    Not all of the pictures taken are filtered with color. Greyscale pictures are smaller and quicker to send. Also, this is a different camera than the one that took the previous pictures.

    This is the Surface stereo camera which is the main camera while the greyscale picture above is taken by a camera on the robotic arm.
    image
    Post edited by Andrew on
  • JasonJason
    Related.
  • AndrewAndrew
    edited June 2008
    Scoop, scoop!
    image
    image

    And if you have your 3-D glasses...
    image
    Post edited by Andrew on
  • ......
    And if you have your 3-D glasses...
    What is that?

    I have 3D (cyan-red) glasses, but can't make out what that's supposed to be. The machine dug that up? What is that? *stare*
  • AndrewAndrew
    I have 3D (cyan-red) glasses, but can't make out what that's supposed to be. The machine dug that up? What is that? *stare*
    It's just the indentation of where the arm scooped.
  • KilarneyKilarney
    edited June 2008
    Easy, guys. The white stuff could just be kieserite. I sincerely hope it's ice, but I thought we appreciated skeptical inquiry here. Let's not go telling everyone that they have found ice until and unless the scientists agree.
    Post edited by Kilarney on
  • AprecheApreche
    Easy, guys. The white stuff could just be kieserite. I sincerely hope it's ice, but I thought we appreciated skeptical inquiry here. Let's not go telling everyone that they have found ice until and unless the scientists agree.
    Yeah, it definitely looks like ice. I hope it's ice. But I won't believe it until our little robot friend melts it and "tastes" it. Actually, if they just put some on a hot plate with a thermometer, and it boiled at 100 degrees celcius, that would probably be enough to demonstrate that it is frozen H2O.
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