Aerospace

After nearly a half-year, Mars lander and science robot Phoenix goes silent. I posted about this interesting project in ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ Parts I, II, and III. This is the finale, although there is a very remote chance the robot could ‘phone home’ one last time.

Watch the video to see the Phoenix Mars approach and landing animation (courtesy NASA).

From NASA:

Mars Phoenix Lander Finishes Successful Work on Red Planet

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot’s arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander’s instruments.

Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.

The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft’s work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages.

Read the rest here.

Over the next several evenings, the International Space Station currently with Shuttle Discovery docked, will make dramatic passes overhead. I regularly visit a site called SpaceWeather.com; the site features articles and widgets about things going on in space. I tuned into the feature that predicts satellite passes for individual locations (based on zip or postal code) and found these for my zip code:


Date....Rise........dir.duration.el..magnitude
June 05 10:03:34 pm NNW 10:05:44 30° -1.3 (very bright)
June 07 09:12:24 pm NNW 09:14:32 31° -1.4 (very bright)
June 08 09:34:02 pm WNW 09:36:22 59° -2.6 (very bright)
June 10 08:42:33 pm WNW 08:44:54 67° -2.8 (very bright)


I’ll be looking at the times specified. I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to see something like this nice image from APOD:

Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story 2 fame

Story from NASA:

Buzz Lightyear to Soar with Discovery

Seven astronauts who will fly into orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery will have comfortable seats for the climb into space. An eighth space ranger won’t have a seat at all. In fact, he will be packed tight inside a box and won’t even get to enjoy the ride up.

But it’s nothing veteran spaceman Buzz Lightyear can’t overcome.

The good news is that he’ll have some sports shows to listen to, along with a host of jerseys that have been to the Champs Elysees in Paris for the Tour de France and to the Super Bowl.

More accustomed to soaring among the galaxies on fold-out wings and a backpack rocket, Lightyear will take to space on Discovery’s STS-124 mission stowed inside a locker in Discovery’s crew compartment. The 12-inch-tall action figure is flying as part of a partnership between NASA and Disney Parks to encourage students to pursue studies in science, technology and mathematics, one of NASA’s main educational goals.

In Part II, I posted a neat little video that shows the final landing sequence and initial deployment of panels and sensors. I’m hoping that I will be able to watch the control center during final approach and landing. I expect it will be on the NASA Channel – I’m going to check into that for sure.

Image and excerpt below courtesy of NASA.

May 13, 2008: NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls of Martian soil and buried ice. The lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on Sunday, May 25th.

Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 13,000 mph. In seven minutes, the spacecraft must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 5 mph before its three legs reach the ground. Confirmation of the landing could come as early as 7:53 p.m. EDT.

Right: An artist’s concept of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander a moment before its 2008 touchdown on the arctic plains of Mars. Pulsed rocket engines control the spacecraft’s speed during the final seconds of descent.

“This is not a trip to grandma’s house. Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Internationally, fewer than half of all attempts to land on Mars have succeeded.”

Rocks large enough to spoil the landing or prevent opening of the solar panels present the greatest known risk. However, images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailed enough to show individual rocks smaller than the lander, have helped lessen that risk.

“We have blanketed nearly the entire landing area with HiRISE images,” said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, chairman of the Phoenix landing-site working group. “This is one of the least rocky areas on all of Mars and we are confident that rocks will not detrimentally impact the ability of Phoenix to land safely.”

May 25th is the target date for the landing of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, whose mission is to explore the Martian arctic plain. NASA adjusted the lander’s trajectory in April to refine the final approach to the planet.

Check out this really cool video of the landing and post-landing phase of the mission.

Launched in August 2007, Phoenix is a stationary lander equipped with a trench-digging robotic arm to bite into the Martian surface and scoop up samples of nearby soil and water ice. The probe’s top-mounted suite of ovens and wet chemistry instruments are designed to help determine whether its arctic plain landing site – a region similar in latitude to central Greenland or northern Alaska on Earth – could have once proven habitable for primitive life.

I’m looking forward to a safe landing for Phoenix. This will be the first Mars lander to use a retro-rocket to cushion the landing since the Mars rovers landed using the balloon-bounce landing technique over 1500 ‘sols’ (Martian days) ago.