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beccastareyesSo, the Phoenix Landing party we had at Cornell had packed the largest room in the astronomy building -- to the point where we were out of chairs, despite the building manager digging out our supply of folding chairs. This is a room we can fit the entire Astronomy Department in, for the record. Briony and Ryan were even interviewed for the local paper, since Dr. Bell and Dr. Squyres were out of town -- in Dr. Squyres' case, it was because CNN wanted to interview him for the landing. Heck, half the people we had for the landing came back to see the first pictures come down, about an hour and a half later.
Think about that. This wasn't a manned mission. We had three orbiters (well, NASA had two, and ESA had one) and two rovers already on Mars, so Phoenix would be #6 working in the area*. It was doing something interesting -- it's more of a robotic chemist than the rovers (who are adorable robot geologists**) -- and had a couple of firsts and firsts-since-Viking***, and it's doing things in a region where no robot has gone before. Plus, if it doesn't find ice, something is seriously wrong -- all signs from orbit say that there's a layer of Martian permafrost no more than 10 cm below the lander's feet. And people were still excited. People think space is cool.
* I'm not counting things that stopped working or never worked in the first place, or that are greasy smears on the Martian surface.
** So sue me. I have a soft spot for robots. Especially ones we send into space.
*** It was the first successful mission that far poleward, and the first lander since the Vikings that landed via retro-rockets, rather than airbags. And if you think that's wild, wait to you see what NASA's engineers have cooked up for the next lander.
Also, if you head to Phoenix's website (or to Ryan, Briony and Mel's blog, which I linked above), there's a color picture up -- it looks a lot like the black-and-white one, except colored Mars red -- and an amazing shot taken byMars Express Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the lander landing. (Basically, the orbiters were all told to listen during the lander's descent, so not only would we have radio from the lander direct-to-Earth, but radio through the orbiters if something went wrong. That helped ensure that the lander never lost communication with Earth -- it wasn't like we could fix things if something went wrong, since there's a 10-15 minute light-speed lag to Mars (and the lander went from atmospheric entry to landing in 7 minutes), but it's nice to know what was happening. So, Mars Express MRO was told pre-landing, 'Hey, point your cameras at this location and take pictures' in hopes that it would catch Phoenix streaking through the atmosphere. Amazing, isn't it?
I also learned that, thanks to the post-Apollo slump, we are having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to things like heat shields that can let us land bigger things on Mars. Apparently, they are still working on the next rover's heat shield because it's too heavy to use the ones we've been using for previous probes, and the people who made the ones for Viking and Apollo have all retired.
In more mundane news, I've cleaned my apartment, except for my closest, craft corner, and the pile of summer clothing by my bed. I also discovered another cat that will eat bread -- in addition to my mother's cat, Geno, Dr. Haynes's cat, Gigi decided she was going to tear open the bag of rolls and take little cat-sized bites out of one.
Think about that. This wasn't a manned mission. We had three orbiters (well, NASA had two, and ESA had one) and two rovers already on Mars, so Phoenix would be #6 working in the area*. It was doing something interesting -- it's more of a robotic chemist than the rovers (who are adorable robot geologists**) -- and had a couple of firsts and firsts-since-Viking***, and it's doing things in a region where no robot has gone before. Plus, if it doesn't find ice, something is seriously wrong -- all signs from orbit say that there's a layer of Martian permafrost no more than 10 cm below the lander's feet. And people were still excited. People think space is cool.
* I'm not counting things that stopped working or never worked in the first place, or that are greasy smears on the Martian surface.
** So sue me. I have a soft spot for robots. Especially ones we send into space.
*** It was the first successful mission that far poleward, and the first lander since the Vikings that landed via retro-rockets, rather than airbags. And if you think that's wild, wait to you see what NASA's engineers have cooked up for the next lander.
Also, if you head to Phoenix's website (or to Ryan, Briony and Mel's blog, which I linked above), there's a color picture up -- it looks a lot like the black-and-white one, except colored Mars red -- and an amazing shot taken by
I also learned that, thanks to the post-Apollo slump, we are having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to things like heat shields that can let us land bigger things on Mars. Apparently, they are still working on the next rover's heat shield because it's too heavy to use the ones we've been using for previous probes, and the people who made the ones for Viking and Apollo have all retired.
In more mundane news, I've cleaned my apartment, except for my closest, craft corner, and the pile of summer clothing by my bed. I also discovered another cat that will eat bread -- in addition to my mother's cat, Geno, Dr. Haynes's cat, Gigi decided she was going to tear open the bag of rolls and take little cat-sized bites out of one.
