Topic: Phoenix

[Nemesis]

This is a repost of a message by S'Raek.  The original thread had very little discussion of the topic because of political spin and was moved to Hot and Spicy.  If you wish to discuss that issue rather than the Phoenix mission itself go to that thread, keep this one on topic .  Link to thread

I didn't see a topic on this anywhere, which rather surprises me.  Seems the Phoenix lander touched down with minimal problems over the weekend.

Link to article

Good stuff.

[Nemesis]

Links to Phoenix articles:

Link 1

With data recorded on board Mars Express, you can hear Phoenix descend on to the surface of the Red Planet. After being processed by the Mars Express Flight Control Team, the sounds of Phoenix descending are audible, loud and clear.

Link 2

The Phoenix lander sent back new sharp color images from Mars late yesterday. Phoenix imaging scientists made a color mosaic of images taken by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager on landing day, May 25, and the first two full "sols," or martian days, after landing.

The panorama, now about one-third complete, shows a fish-eye perspective from the camera, a view from the lander itself all the way to the horizon. Phoenix adjusts its color vision with "Caltargets," calibrated color targets on disks mounted on the landing deck. Its color vision isn't quite like human color vision, but close.

Link 3

Scientists leading NASA's Phoenix Mars mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson sent commands to unstow its robotic arm and take more images of its landing site early today.

The Phoenix lander sent back new sharp color images from Mars late yesterday. Phoenix imaging scientists made a color mosaic of images taken by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager on landing day, May 25, and the first two full "sols," or Martian days, after landing.

Link 4

New images released Saturday reveal what could be a patch of exposed ice beneath the Phoenix lander, mission managers said in an announcement today. Phoenix beamed the images back to Earth late Friday from its Vastitas Borealis landing site in the northern polar region of Mars after using a robotic arm-mounted camera to peer beneath its undercarriage.

[S'Raek]

A couple of technical communication glitches and the article has some pictures I've not seen before.  Still looking like there is ice right near the lander.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,363442,00.html

[S'Raek]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,364443,00.html

Seems like a lot of little problems with the Phoenix. 

[Lepton]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/index.html

Or you could get the use of your tax dollars by viewing information from the government agency responsible for the mission.

[S'Raek]

Well, they got the oven filled.  Nothing on results yet though.  This time I'll like to the NASA site, just to make Lepton happy. 

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080611.html

[Nemesis]

The Software Behind the Mars Phoenix Lander

That's not a really beefy embedded board actually. It's what, thirty-three megahertz?

Yeah. That's — yeah.

About 128 megabytes of RAM?

That's right.