Phoenix Mars Landing Thread

[Ghostrider]

Not really. I was watching live coverage of the Viking 1 landing event on July 4, 1976. Transmission of the first surface image began 25 seconds after landing and took about 4 minutes. During those 4 minutes the Viking lander deployed a high-gain antenna and pointed it to Earth for direct communication. That was followed by a wide angle panoramic shot. That was a long time ago but it wasn't the dark ages :lol:

Same here. There's this widely spread misconception that anything before teh interweb was stone-age material. I daresay people were far more ingenious back then because the tech allowed less leeway.
I still have the special insert from "Epoca" (italian magazine) with the full colour shots from Mars.
BTW, the Dark Ages were actually cool. Lots of stuff was developed at the time.

 

[Andy44]

Yeah, like the afro.

 

[Peter3210]

I am old enough to have seen it, but I don't recall doing so. I was probably either in bed or playing outdoors. Given that it was the Bicentennial, I probably watched some serious fireworks that night. Too bad there was no Orbiter forum to keep me up to speed back then.

Viking 1 landed at 7:53 AM EDT which I remember because I was getting ready to leave for the bicentennial events that day in DC. When I got to the elevator of my building I said to the first person I met that "we" had just landed on Mars. He looked at me as though I was the one from Mars . Yeah it would have been cool to have had Orbiter back then. The first program anything like Orbiter was Microsoft Space Simulator which came along in 1994. I remember creating a situation file for the Galileo mission to Jupiter and uploading it to Compuserve which allowed several hundred people to follow Galileo past the South Pole of Europa and very close to Io enroute to Jupiter on Dec 7, 1995. Fun stuff.

 

[astrosammy]

 

[Peter3210]

The first ever image of a Mars spacecraft as it parachutes down to the surface is shown. The image of Phoenix on its parachute was acquired by the HI Rise camera on the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter as it passed overhead. A truly spectacular technical feat.

 

[astrosammy]

Cool picture!!

 

[Missioncmdr]

Seriously? That is a picture of Phoenix on descent from ORBIT? Fantastic picture. It is simply unbelievable.

 

[pete.dakota]

The first ever image of a Mars spacecraft as it parachutes down to the surface is shown. The image of Phoenix on its parachute was acquired by the HI Rise camera on the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter as it passed overhead. A truly spectacular technical feat.

It's pictures like that the word "awesome" was created for. Thanks for posting.

 

[Belisarius]

Awesome is really the word for it... I'm speechless

 

[Andy44]

A-frakken-mazing! After seeing all the animation videos it's so cool to actually see one of these things in flight!

Now someone needs to get the orbital parameters of MRO and recreate this screenshot in Orbiter.

 

[Robert van der Veeke]

That picture is amazing.

In 20 years time when an old and grey Tom Hanks produces "From the Earth to Mars" the script will read:

"Wanna have fun, come to my house, you throw a tennisball from the front and i will toss a camera from the backyard and let it take a picture of your tennisball when they pass each other."

 

[Artlav]

The re-entry picture is quite impressive. Unfortunately, it would have been much more impressive if it was taken by a man from a Mars-orbiting station they promised by year 2000 back in the 60's.

Let's hope Phoenix find something that will make a manned trip to Mars worth it's cost.

 

[Peter3210]

Here is a color image of the Phoenix Lander on the ground on Mars as imaged from orbit by the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter. The image was acquired from a distance of approximately 187 miles. Notice the two solar panels extending from opposite sides of Phoenix.

 

[BrianJ]

hmy: Amazing pics!
It might just be wishful thinking.....but it almost looks like you can see the shadows from the SSI camera mast and robotic arm cover on the top of the lander!

 

[silent_protagonist]

If you thought the parachute picture was amazing, wait until you see it in context: (sorry for the big pic, the condensed version just doesn't do it justice.)

This has to be one of the most epic space pictures taken since the end of the space race.

Here's NASA's caption:

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera acquired this image of Phoenix hanging from its parachute as it descended to the Martian surface. Shown here is a 10 kilometer (6 mile) diameter crater informally called "Heimdall," and an improved full-resolution image of the parachute and lander. Although it appears that Phoenix is descending into the crater, it is actually about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) in front of the crater.

 

[Missioncmdr]

Holy . Really puts that into perspective.

 

[pete.dakota]

That's amazing, silent. Is that the biggest res?

 

[silent_protagonist]

That's amazing, silent. Is that the biggest res?

That's the biggest that I've been able to find (original context:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/press/PSP_008579_9020_descent.html). I took a brief look around to see if I could find the raw HiRISE image, but didn't have any luck.

EDIT: The HiRISE Team Blog says that the picture is scaled down by a factor of ten in order to cut down on noise. There a few people requesting a larger resolution, though, so maybe they'll release one. You should also read the entry for the original shot, it gives a remarkable impression of just how hard this shot was to pull off.

 

[Peter3210]

The interesting thing about the crater and parachute picture is that the spacecraft was almost 12 miles in front of the crater at the moment the image was acquired. The optics and angular relationships make it appear as though the spacecraft is entering the crater. Phoenix now sits atop the ejecta blanket thrown out from the crater when it was formed. Since the ejecta material had very few large rocks the landing site is likewise devoid of large rocks.

 

[Andy44]

That photo just blows me away. Thousands of miles away on an alien planet no man has ever been to and we are operating spacecraft in concert with each other and making it look easy. And my God, the majesty of that crater photo is just amazing! My compliments to the operations teams of all the spacecraft involved in this landing, and to those who support them.