Astronomy

I must admit, this post is actually too late. There are some trouble on this blog’s server, so I cannot post on this important event very soon. But the show must go on. Now we’ve got the server up again, so, here we goes.

As you probably knew, on May 25, the NASA’s Phoenix lander have successfully enter Martian atmosphere and landed in the northern polar region of the red planet’s. It is the first smooth landing for the Mars probe since Viking 1 and 2 in 1976. That’s 32 years ago, and the third time in history! This marks the end of the probe’s long journey from Earth, that takes almost 10 month through the distance of 422 million miles (679 million kilometers).

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed that the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. In the intervening time, those signals crossed the distance from Mars to Earth at the speed of light. The confirmation ignited cheers by mission team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona.

About two hours after touchdown, it sent more good news. The first pictures confirmed that the solar arrays needed for the mission’s energy supply had unfolded properly, and masts for the stereo camera and weather station had swung into vertical position.

Another picture shows close-up view of one of the lander’s three footpads.

Surface picture on the landing site shows flat landscape that strewn with tiny pebbles and polygonal cracking, a pattern seen widely in Martian high latitudes and also observed in permafrost terrains on Earth. The polygonal cracking is believed to have resulted from seasonal freezing and thawing of surface ice.

Phoenix carries science instruments to assess whether ice just below the surface ever thaws and whether some chemical ingredients of life are preserved in the icy soil. These are key questions in evaluating whether the environment has ever been favorable for microbial life. Phoenix will also study other aspects of the soil and atmosphere with instrument capabilities never before used on Mars. Canada supplied the lander’s weather station.

Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. A few months earlier, NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

You can find more pictures from the mission at the project’s official website. (Picture credits: NASA)

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