Phoenix lander closes in on Martian arctic

[thomasallencummins]

Phoenix lander closes in on Martian arctic

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24811991

PASADENA, California - NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is on target for a fiery plunge through the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet and a bull’s-eye touchdown near its north pole, mission officials said Sunday.

The robotic craft, designed to dig into the icy soil to determine if the permafrost could have supported primitive life, was expected to land at 7:38 p.m. ET Sunday under a sunny Martian sky.

Early Sunday, mission controllers decided there was no need to use their last chance to tweak the flight path, leaving them with nothing to do but wait for Phoenix to carry out the landing on its own.

Well that's in about an hour from now. With any luck Phoenix won't suffer a similar fate as some of the previous retro rocket landing in the past. I'll be watching keeping my fingers crossed. ;D


“What’s the scariest moment for me? It’s if we lose the signal during descent,” said Peter Smith, the mission’s lead investigator from the University of Arizona at Tucson. “If we get the signal all the way to the surface, we’ll be very happy and there’s going to be tremendous cheers.”

[thomasallencummins]

8:00 pm watched the landing live. Looks like it landed sucessfully. Woohoo!

[baylou]

Woohoo is right!!! Totally awesome. If you can believe this, I watched it in the good old days of black-and-white TV when you heard this quote..."One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind!"

[ram]

Hooray for Phoenix! I'm watching it on the Discovery channel.

Baylou, you watched the Moon landing in '69? Wow!

[baylou]

July 1969 doesn't seem so far away to me, but all things are relative! Yep, I watched on TV when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon - it was truly a magnificent event at the time (even for "flower children"). Summer before my senior year in high school.

[ram]

May 26, 2008 7:46:47 GMT -5 baylou said:

July 1969 doesn't seem so far away to me, but all things are relative! Yep, I watched on TV when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon - it was truly a magnificent event at the time (even for "flower children"). Summer before my senior year in high school.

Being born in '70, I completely missed that epochal event. And the moon landing. (Rimshot!)

On a list of the greatest moments of the 20th Century, I would rank Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon in the top 5. Maybe top 1.

I hope that in my lifetime I'll get to witness the first human expedition to Mars. For now, I'm just hoping the Phoenix Lander finds signs of life in the Martian ice - which would be mind-blowing, to say the least.

[thomasallencummins]

I'd like to witness the first human on Mars. I wouldn't want to be that person but I'd be fine watching it on television.
I was about 5 years old when we first landed on the Moon. I seem to remember watching it but I can't be certain if I remember the actual event or what I've seen thousands of times since then. I wish I knew. I certainly remember other things from around that time period but the human memory is a funky "hit and miss" kind of thing.