Watching the Phoenix Land- Sort of

It was reminiscent of the landing of the Mars Rover a number of years ago on a 4th of July. This time it was the Sunday of Memorial Day. I dialed up ABC New online for their live feed from the Jet Propulsion Lab in California to watch what happened.

Well, watching is a kind of misnomer. At least as far as watching the Phoenix itself was concerned. There was nothing to watch except a bunch of very anxious engineers. Here are these guys who are numbers and science and all the other engineering factual things. These are not people who are particularly known for their emotions. Yet they were nervous. And tense. And restless. Many tried not to show it by chatting with their neighbor at the console panel. Or they stared at the big screen of data.

They had nothing to do except watch the data. Look for any signs of trouble, perhaps, but they were completely powerless to the software they had programmed, the hardware they had designed or helped build. In short in many ways they were as much an observer as I was. But their whole professional existence was right there. On the line. It would be a lot more fun to analyze whatever data came in if the Phoenix landed successfully than if it hit the surface and was never heard from again.


Well, as we all know by now, the Phoenix landed quite easily, on time, no apparent glitches. Already it is sending back new pictures of a part of Mars no one has ever seen before.


But perhaps one of the more interesting pictures (so far) is this one on the right:

That big white thing with the smaller white thing beneath it is the Phoenix and its parachute. The picture was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.

As long as there is a sense of adventure and exploration I have a hunch that we will continue to discover more and more of amazing interest in our world and universe. I am never bored by the possibilities.

Go to Phoenix Mars Mission home page.