NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander lands on Mars May 25

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by cosmictraveler, May 10, 2008.

  1. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    They said that the first picture wouldn't be sent for an hour and a half after landing or so. That would mean about another, what, 40 minutes or so?


    Yes. Read Only is also strong in the dark side.
    Irony is lovely.
     
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  3. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    There you go.
    Pictures are coming in.
     
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  5. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

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  7. draqon Banned Banned

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    hmmm...I expected the place to look more lively than that...at least some ice...but nope...

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  8. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    That was an awesome landing! Them counting down the altitude was just teeth shattering, even with MER we did not have that much data come up during the decent (Just toned beacon signals)!

    Now they landed way eastward of what they wanted (maybe even out of the landing eclipses) that a little weird, I hope the soil still has ice for them.

    http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/phoenix/images/color1.jpg
     
  9. draqon Banned Banned

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    Electric Fetus...the whole Vastitas Borealis has got water ice all over it as mapped by Odyssey 2001 probe
     
  10. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    It just one of the maps they showed on NASA tv showed spot of different terrain, wonder what that is, if if pure ice under a few cm of dust Phoenix could be in trouble as it can't dig through pure ice (only permafrost).
     
  11. draqon Banned Banned

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    nope in Vastitas Borealis...there is no pure ice.
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    We can only hope.
     
  13. kaneda Actual Cynic Registered Senior Member

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    A flat and featureless plain. No tectonic activity to produce mountains.
     
  14. draqon Banned Banned

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    its low altitude too...all across the northern hemisphere
     
  15. blobrana Registered Senior Member

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    "ESA completed a key step in its ongoing support to NASA's Phoenix mission, when signals from the Phoenix Mars lander recorded by Mars Express were successfully received at ESA's Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany. NASA has just made the first few images available."

    Read more
     
  16. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Awesome picture!

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    Yep, that a picture of it DURING decent to mars! MRO took this snap shot and was lucky enough to get a shot of it during the very few minutes of it riding the parachute down.
     
  17. Gustav Banned Banned

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    /perplexed

    lookee here
    youse a biologist
    how would you know that factoid?
    and of nuke reactors and shit

    /scratches head
     
  18. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    1. It doesn't matter who I am.
    2. they said so on one of these nasa briefings that the arm can't dig through solid ice, at best it can sample the surface of solid ice with a rasp on the back-hoes scoop.
    3. I can READ! I READ stuff like nuclear reactors and shit, etc. Dam.
     
  19. 2inquisitive The Devil is in the details Registered Senior Member

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    ElectricFetus, the scoop on the arm can't dig through hard ice, but they added a grinding bit, picked up at a local hardware store, that can grind through very hard ice. In fact, it is the ground up particles of water ice that NASA will retrieve for the onboard labs. They think they can get the particles into the craft before the ice sublimates. The scoop is just for digging through surface soil to uncover the ice which lies below the surface.
     
  20. SkywalkerJedi アスラン・ザラ ( Athrun "Alex" Zala ) Registered Senior Member

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    I heard about it last summer. Anyways, I sort of wish that they found life, because our planet is becomming more unhabitable by the second. We would have a colony on Mars, wouldn't it be nice?
     
  21. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    There's really very little wrong with the Earth. I like space exploration for the education that it gives and the way that it solves the "all of our eggs in one basket" problem.
     
  22. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Not really because they wouyld need a constant supply of goods from earth and they always will be in space suits if they go out onto the Martian surface. The average temperatures range fron 200 below zero to 200 above zero, not very easy to live in those conditions as well as no oxygen and being hit with enormous amounts of radiation.

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  23. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    If you have water, you have pretty much everything. Actually, the next thing to look for is nitrogen. That might be harder to find than water.

    I have believed for a while that Mars may be rich in metals because it's a lot like a stripped core of a planet.
     

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