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NickDG

Mars Phoenix Lander - 9 Days to Touch Down . . .

By NickDG, in The Bonfire

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NickDG    23

NickDG
Hi All,

Below is a copy of a head's up e-mail I recently sent to family and friends. So I thought to include extended friends here too . . .

Julia is my girlfriend of over 12 years and she's an Aerospace Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She's also an experienced jumper . . .

Hi Everyone,

The Phoenix Lander, the mission to Mars that Julia has been working on for almost two years, and that launched last year, will be landing on Mars on Sunday, May 25, 2008.

It will take Phoenix seven minutes to descend through the Martian atmosphere and land, however since Mars is ten light minutes from earth, and the radio signals travel at the speed of light, we won't know what happened until the landing sequence is over by ten minutes.

The first possible confirmation time for the spacecraft's landing will be on Sunday May 25 at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

If your cable TV provider carries NASA-TV you can see the coverage there. If not you can see it on the Internet on NASA-TV which is at the below link: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

NASA TV Schedule:

May 25, Sunday
3 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)
6 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Media Channel)
6:30 - 8:45 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Public Channel)
9:30 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - First Downlink of Data - JPL (Public and Media Channels)

May 26, Monday
12 a.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Post Landing Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)
2 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Update Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)

Here's very cool Mission Overview provided by NASA and JPL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524&feature=related

Julia has been busy shuttling back and forth to the University of Arizona over the past few months. The University is a partner in the mission with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in Pasadena. Right now Julia is working with an exact duplicate of Phoenix spacecraft in Arizona and running it through all the moves it will have to make during the decent and also once it's on the surface of Mars.

Julia is coming home this weekend and then goes back to Arizona for three months. During that three months as the scientists decide what they want the Lander to do as far as collecting soils samples, performing tests, and so on, Julia will be writing the commands, testing them on the spacecraft they have in Arizona to confirm they work, and then she'll upload them to the Lander.

The reason the spacecraft is called Phoenix is because this is a second attempt at this mission. The first mission, called Mars Polar Lander, which launched in 1998 crashed into the surface of Mars. What happened was after the landing legs deployed, they bounced upward enough to fool the onboard computer into thinking the spacecraft had touched down. So it shut down the engines while the vehicle was still a few hundred feet off the ground. They have told the computers to expect the "bounce" so that shouldn't be a problem this time. And because this current mission is using all the spare parts from that first failed mission it's why it's called, "Phoenix, Rising from the Ashes."

Hopefully we may catch a glimpse of Julia during the coverage this time. She normally ducks and runs when she sees the cameras, but I've been pressing her to not to do that this time, so we'll see . . .

Another issue Julia and her team are watching closely is the Martian weather. It sounds funny as we are more used to Moon landings. There is no atmosphere on the Moon, so there is no weather. However, Mars does have an atmosphere and there is the possibility of high winds and even dust devils. But that's all they can do is watch the weather. They can't go on orbit around Mars to wait for better conditions as it's strictly get there and land. (In skydiving parlance, it's get in, or go in!)

I always knew there was a lot of effort that goes into these missions but watching Julia work so hard has really brought it home to me. They've had some spectacular successes over the years, like the two Martian Rovers that two years later are still operating and taking photographs, and there have also been several other good landings and several spacecraft put onto orbit around the planet for surveying and communication purposes. But the few failed missions get most of the publicity, and from a future funding standpoint this is a very important mission. So keep your fingers and toes crossed everyone!!!

Julia is feeding me information when she has time, so I'll keep you all updated.

The latest updates on Phoenix are here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

NickD :)

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NickDG    23

NickDG

That's right. But a funny thing is the people who do most of the parachute stuff for these missions is a company called Vertigo in Lake Elsinore. (Not the same Vertigo that used to build B.A.S.E. equipment).

I asked around and none of these guys even jump. They use slide rules instead and all that math that goes sideways.

I saw a film of a Vertigo test in a horizontal wind tunnel, the test was for a mission that eventually failed to soft land on Mars. The canopy was obviously squidding, a condition familiar to any older round parachute rigger. The load is simply going to too fast to allow the skirt to blow open, even though the apex is pressurized.

I off-handily mentioned this to an employee at Vertigo over a beer at the Elsinore DZ and he ran back to the lab so fast it scared me. I'm sure now they didn't even know what squidding was . . .

Someday, I'm sure an Astronaut, sent to investigate, will come across that failed parachute and its payload from that mission to Mars.

I'd much rather Apex BASE were building the parachutes for these NASA missions. At least they are betting and not just dealing . . .

NickD :)

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Gene03    0

Gene03

Cocheese, that's funny.
R/C spacecraft? Ain't that stuff pricey?;)

“The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec quotes (Polish writer, poet and satirist 1906-1966)

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NickDG    23

NickDG

Nice landing inclination, a quarter degree off level. They should have no problems with deploying the solar array.

The first public pictures should down link in about an hour.

But Julia sent me an early one . . .

NickD :)

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ZigZagMarquis    9

ZigZagMarquis

Yeah, right, Nick. That pic has obviously been photoshoped. If a bunch of skydivers had really been there, in addition to the Air Trash hat there would have been a bunch of empty beer bottles, beer cans, bottle caps, broken rubber bands and empty condom packages scattered about too... :P

Anyway, congrats to NASA, at least they didn't crater Mars... again. :D

:o

:)

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