Phoenix early surface activities

ToSeek · #1 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:24 AM

Initial press release:

Quote:

Phoenix Has Landed!
May 25, 2008

Pasadena -- A NASA spacecraft landed in the Martian arctic today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for the likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53 p.m. Pacific 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.

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.: Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.

Mr. Milton Banana · #2 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:28 AM

Cool!!!

Literally and figuratively. What's the temperature around the pole- -215 degrees F?

01101001 · #3 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:29 AM

MRO playback complete.
One minute to start Mars Express playback.

(At UnmannedSpaceflight, someone mentioned and confirmed MRO was going to try to take EDL images. More likely to not succeed, but wouldn't the entry streak fom above look cool? Keep fingers crossed.)

ToSeek · #4 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:30 AM

NASA TV has taken a break from coverage but will be back at 6:30 PDT, 9:30 EDT.

01101001 · #5 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:32 AM

Emily Lakdawalla should be (re-)firing up her UStream live video chat soon. She had to make a phone call or something...

Oh, she's texting that she's trying to take her laptop and microphone into the press room. I hear something....

She's turned her computer around and is live-chatting the briefing -- or whatever is going to happen in the press room.

Sam5 · #6 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:36 AM

NASA TV direct feed (nothing much going on right now):
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

This feed runs about 52 seconds behind the cable TV version of the NASA Channel.

If anyone has Direct TV, the Channel is # 283.

01101001 · #7 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 12:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01101001

She's turned her computer around and is live-chatting the briefing -- or whatever is going to happen in the press room.

Yeah! We're secretly watching the briefing.

It's not on NASA TV, but about 6 of the Phoenix team are meeting with maybe 30 members of the press for Q&A -- observed by an extra 180 people on Emily's live chat.

Edit: It was hard to hear it all. Emily briefly summarized that there were no surprises and everything was pretty much on the money.

She's stopping the chat to go work on her blog that pooped out during EDL. It's back up.

ToSeek · #8 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:00 AM

Ms. Emily says Phoenix successfully turned so the solar panels would be aligned east-west, which was what they wanted. Also said the landing was on target, not exactly clear what that means.

Jerry · #9 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:04 AM

In the ellipse. Parachute deployment was seven seconds later than expected but in the nominal window. The best guess (based upon the late parachute) is that they are near the long end of the ellipse (my best guess, nothing official.)

01101001 · #10 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:29 AM

Emily Lakdawalla's been chatting again for a while, answering questions: UStream live video chat

NASA TV (Yahoo version) slug claims: 6:30 PM PDT (now):
Commentary, First Images
Oops. It's on now.

.3 degrees tilt. I think it was .68 degrees beyond nominal direction orientation. Nice.

Parachute about 7 seconds late. Off axis slightly. Still analyzing. Thrilled with results.

(Emily just signed off.)

ToSeek · #11 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:30 AM

NASA TV about to resume Phoenix coverage.

ToSeek · #12 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:32 AM

JPL currently taking in downlink of recorded EDL data.

ToSeek · #13 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:34 AM

Engineer is saying it couldn't have gone better. Spacecraft is tilted 0.3 degrees. Reading off lots of numbers.

Parachute deployment seven seconds late. Landing slightly "off-axis" as a result.

Will get more detailed information in 12 minutes. Ops team in Tucson is taking over.

aurora · #14 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:34 AM

Vertical velocity at landing was as designed.

01101001 · #15 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:40 AM

About 3 minutes to: Start Mars Odyssey relay. About 19 minutes long.

ToSeek · #16 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:43 AM

JPL press release:

Quote:

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-081 May 25, 2008

NASA'S Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

"For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars," Griffin said. "I couldn't be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement."

During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft's cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries provide electricity until the lander's own pair of solar arrays spread open.

"We've passed the hardest part and we're breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power," said JPL's Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager. If all goes well, engineers will learn the status of the solar arrays between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time (10 and 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time) from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

The team will also be watching for the Sunday night transmission to confirm that masts for the stereo camera and the weather station have swung to their vertical positions.

"What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. "I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our mission."

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network.

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. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey 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.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .

ToSeek · #17 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:47 AM

Odyssey has line-of-site to the landing site. No word on contact yet.

ToSeek · #18 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:48 AM

Odyssey is communicating with Phoenix - they're looking at realtime data!

ToSeek · #19 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:52 AM

Positive charging (means solar arrays deployed). Images are being downloaded, not being shown yet.

Sam5 · #20 (**permalink**) 26-May-2008, 01:53 AM

LIVE NASA FEEDS:

NASA TV direct feed:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Also, you can go here:
http://wwitv.com/portal.htm
On the left, move the scroll slider way down to: USA [m-z] 64
Click on that and on the right, move the slider down to where you can see the NASA channel list.

I get a feed on Windows Media Player here:
http://wwitv.com/a1/b3747.asx

And this one too, titled “Yahoo Broadcast”:
http://wwitv.com/a1/5741.asx