We're On Mars, Let The Probing Commence

The Phoenix probe landed safely on Mars on Sunday after a nine month+ journey to the red planet. According to NASA, over two-thirds of all attempts to get to Mars fail. That's not cool considering this mission alone cost almost half a billion dollars.


Apparently the part that worried NASA most wasn't the possibility of something going amiss during its 422 million mile trek through space (which began August of 2007), nor is it the initial departure; it's the landing. They label it the '7 minutes of terror.' They had to try to get it to land in a specific area of Mars known as Vastitas Borealis, which is "a relatively rock-free, flat region in the Mars arctic" (which is conducive to a successful landing) and that will also have the longest exposure to sunlight in order to receive energy to its solar panels the entire Martian day.

So what exactly happens in the '7 minutes of terror'?

[...] with seven minutes remaining, Phoenix is to plunge into the atmosphere at 12,750 miles an hour, where friction will slow it, heating the shield to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. At 8 miles in altitude and 1,000 miles an hour, the spacecraft will deploy its parachute for the next three minutes of descent, when it is to jettison the heat shield, extend its three landing legs and begin using its radar to gather readings on its speed and distance from the surface.

At six-tenths of a mile above the surface and 125 miles an hour, Phoenix is to separate from its parachute and the back shell that holds it and begin the sequential firing of 12 rocket thrusters that slow it to landing at 5 1/2 miles an hour 40 seconds later. [NYT]

Even through the landing phase, mission control sat on edge for at least fifteen minutes as it takes at least this amount of time for the data to travel from Mars Phoenix to them at Mission Control. So it could have been a complete failure without them yet being aware of it. However, as we now are all aware, the mission has so far been a success, especially after the suspense of what could have been an eventful landing subsided with no fanfare.

I can't imagine having that much work being put into something, having it travel 422 million miles for over nine months, and then have it pretty much fart when it lands with an extended middle antenna pointing towards the camera as it clicks a final-picture of itself, flipping a bird to mission control, just when what appears to be Big Foot approaching while the feed dies from the monitor and the connection is lost. "NO!"

But as we know, this hasn't yet been the case and everything appears to be going smoothly as made evident by Mars Phoenix's Twitter account. Upon receiving news of the landing, NASA was undoubtedly celebrating like only they know how--at the Ames Exploration Center with robotic demonstrations, Phoenix animations and presentations about the mission from Ames' scientists. Those animals.

Although this is a mission that was ultimately put together to examine the planet for favorable conditions that may have once supported life, we should be prepared for the X-Files types to start spreading their conspiracy theories of governmental cover-ups of covert missions as in years past, as so eloquently pointed out in this blog by Livescience: Life on Mars? Yeah Right.

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Additional Links:

• Images from the Mars Phoenix rover