Rocket Science

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.

In 1981 I saw a spaceship land on Earth – twice. I went to Rogers Dry Lake by Edwards AFB in the desert and witnessed the arrival of the Columbia. I went April 14th for the first landing and again on the 4th of July for the second mission.

In 1992, I went to Titusville, Florida and watched as Columbia ascended atop a fiery plume and a trail of white smoke. The ground shook with the rumble and crack of the boosters.

Five years ago today, I awoke with a start – something – I don’t know what – made me turn on the little LCD TV I keep in the nightstand. I was horrified to see images of the destruction of Columbia.

I have a fond place in my heart for the Astronauts of STS-107 and the Columbia – and I will never forget February 1, 2003.

Image from NASA Image of the Day, taken from aboard STS-107. Click on it for 1024×768 in the viewer.

I was in my freshman year in high school and remember the elation I felt after months of failed Project Vanguard flights in the wake of the Russian Sputnik launches.

Image credit NASA

Entering the Space Age

Through the combined efforts of JPL and the Army Ballistic Missile Ballistic Agency, Explorer 1 launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 31, 1958. There was a nail-biting wait before tracking stations confirmed that Explorer 1 had gone successfully into orbit around Earth. With the launch of Explorer 1, the United States officially entered the space age.

MESSENGER, a spacecraft probe sent to explore the innermost planet, imaged the planet in multiple spectra last week. NASA/JHU image technologists re-assembled the image into colors detectable by the human eye. The result is this beautiful rendering of the delicate colors of Mercury. Click the image to enlarge.

By the way, Mars Rover OPPORTUNITY has been on the surface of the red planet for four Earth years as of today. Rover SPIRIT passed the four-year milestone January 3, three weeks ago. Congratulations to the Rover Team.

Here’s the MESSENGER article about this image.

Mercury – in Color!

One week ago, the MESSENGER spacecraft transmitted to Earth the first high-resolution image of Mercury by a spacecraft in over 30 years, since the three Mercury flybys of Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975. MESSENGER’s Wide Angle Camera (WAC), part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), is equipped with 11 narrow-band color filters, in contrast to the two visible-light filters and one ultraviolet filter that were on Mariner 10’s vidicon camera. By combining images taken through different filters in the visible and infrared, the MESSENGER data allow Mercury to be seen in a variety of high-resolution color views not previously possible. MESSENGER’s eyes can see far beyond the color range of the human eye, and the colors seen in the accompanying image are somewhat different from what a human would see.

The color image was generated by combining three separate images taken through WAC filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths; filters that transmit light with wavelengths of 1000, 700, and 430 nanometers (infrared, far red, and violet, respectively) were placed in the red, green, and blue channels, respectively, to create this image. The human eye is sensitive across only the wavelength range 400 to 700 nanometers. Creating a false-color image in this way accentuates color differences on Mercury’s surface that cannot be seen in the single-filter, black-and-white image released last week.

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