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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on May 25, 2008, 06:18:48 PM
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Pretty cool.
Probe lands on Mars, NASA says Story
By Kate Tobin
Senior Producer, CNN Science & Technology
(CNN) -- The first-ever landing of a probe near Mars' north pole happened smoothly on Sunday, NASA confirmed.
The Mars Phoenix Lander, completing a 296-day, 422-million-mile journey, closed in on the Red Planet with a 50-50 chance of a successful touchdown on its arctic plains, NASA officials said.
The landing -- dubbed the "seven minutes of terror" -- was a nerve-wracking experience for mission managers, who have witnessed the failure of similar missions.
Despite that, they could hardly contain their excitement. In mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, they celebrated the lander's much-anticipated entry.
Historically, 55 percent of all Mars missions have ended in failure. Watch the challenges the mission faced »
The mission of the Phoenix is to analyze the soils and permafrost of Mars' arctic tundra for signs of life -- past or present.
The first pictures from Phoenix were expected to be revealed at 9:43 p.m. ET.
Phoenix is equipped with a robotic arm capable of scooping up ice and dirt to look for organic evidence that life once existed there, or even exists now.
"We are not going to be able to answer the final question of is there life on Mars," said Smith, the optical scientist on the team. "We will take the next important step. We'll find out if there's organic material associated with this ice in the polar regions. Ice is a preserver, and if there ever were organics on Mars and they got into that ice, they will still be there today."
Earlier, officials said the spacecraft was expected to be traveling at 13,000 mph when it hit the Martian atmosphere. Onboard computers were supposed to deploy its parachute, jettison its heat shield, extend its three legs, release the parachute and finally fire its thrusters to bring it down for a soft landing.
The twin to the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, Phoenix was supposed to travel to Mars in 2001 as the Mars Surveyor spacecraft. They were originally part of the "better, faster, cheaper" program, formulated by then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin to beef up planetary exploration on a lean budget.
But Polar malfunctioned during its entry and descent into Mars' atmosphere in 1999 and crashed. Technical investigations later concluded that as many as a dozen design flaws or malfunctions doomed the spacecraft.
The failure of that mission, as well as another spacecraft called the Mars Climate Orbiter the same year, led NASA to put future missions on hold and rethink the "better, faster, cheaper" approach. Mars Surveyor went to the warehouse. iReport.com: Send your photos, video of space
"The trouble is somebody forgot the 'better' part," said Weiler. "By pushing the 'faster and cheaper' part so hard, engineers were forced to make decisions that weren't necessarily the best and right decisions. And that led to both the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and ultimately the Mars Polar Lander and eventually the entire Mars program."
But all was not lost. In 2003, Smith proposed a plan to re-engineer the Mars Surveyor and fly it on a mission to look for signatures of life in the ice and dirt of Mars far North. Mars Phoenix, literally and figuratively, rose from the ashes of Surveyor. Learn about NASA's past missions to mars »
Engineers set to work, testing and retesting the onboard system to ferret out and fix all the flaws they could find.
The Phoenix landing site was targeted for the far northern plains of Mars, near the northern polar ice cap. Data from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft indicate large quantities of ice there, probably in the form of permafrost, either on the surface or just barely underground.
"Follow the water" has become the unifying theme of NASA's Mars exploration strategy.
In 2004, the rover Opportunity found evidence that a salty sea once lapped the shores of an area near Mars' equator called Meridiani Planum. Astrobiologists generally agree that it's best to look for life in wet places.
"There is no life on Earth where there isn't water," Weiler said. "However, where there's water, you find life, especially if you have organics, organic material and energy."
Smith believes that the mission probably will find organic footprints of life.
"Whether it's in the northern plains, I have no idea. But the universe is an immense place. In our Milky Way, we find hundreds of planets, and those are just in the nearby stars," he said. "So there must be huge astronomical numbers of planets in the universe."
So are we really alone? "I suspect not," Smith said.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/25/mars.lander/index.html
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our tax dollars hard at work. ::)
NT
haha, maybe they'll find Bin Laden up there and we can finally end the war.
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I wonder if the screwballs who believe we faked the moon landing also believe this is faked?
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i wonder if people who still believe Iraq had WMD (even thought Bush, Rove, and Cheney now all admit there were none) also believe in Santa Claus?
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youlll never see whats actually on mars 8)
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youlll never see whats actually on mars 8)
why? what do you think is on Mars that we will not see?
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It's only a matter of time. Some nut will have Mars hoax conspiracy theory pretty soon.
(http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon-movie.jpg)
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It's only a matter of time. Some nut will have Mars hoax conspiracy theory pretty soon.
(http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon-movie.jpg)
You have the red, white and blue dick jammed up your ass further than anyone else I think i've ever heard.
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You have the red, white and blue dick jammed up your ass further than anyone else I think i've ever heard.
Hahahah! Nooo, don't tell me you believe the moon landing was faked too? lol. . . . .
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Hahahah! Nooo, don't tell me you believe the moon landing was faked too? lol. . . . .
I think it has to do more with your blind devotion and faith for everything in a system that has zero allegiance to you.
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I think it has to do more with your blind devotion and faith for everything in a system that has zero allegiance to you.
Is that a yes or no? Is the moon landing a sinister government plot?
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Nice 8)
Beat that India and China
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It's only a matter of time. Some nut will have Mars hoax conspiracy theory pretty soon.
dork.
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Nice 8)
Beat that India and China
Im sure they are just full of envy, but then again when we have to pay them back all those billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars we borrowed it'll balance itself out.
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Im sure they are just full of envy, but then again when we have to pay them back all those billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars we borrowed it'll balance itself out.
Haha. Believe me they are. Whoever controls space, controls the earth.
Inflationary wars. Each country pushing down the value of their dollar, in order to increase the value of exports, and create a flase facade of increased gnp.
Money?? Just watch us jump off the gold standard and fuck everyones parade up, it's been done before.
American Flag on Mars....pretty big deal....could not be any better seeing as how it's Memorial Day Weekend.
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Nice 8)
Beat that India and China
And everyone else. As usual. :)
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dork.
(http://navyscoop.com/pics/screwball.jpg)
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Haha. Believe me they are. Whoever controls space, controls the earth.
Inflationary wars. Each country pushing down the value of their dollar, in order to increase the value of exports, and create a flase facade of increased gnp.
Money?? Just watch us jump off the gold standard and fuck everyones parade up, it's been done before.
American Flag on Mars....pretty big deal....could not be any better seeing as how it's Memorial Day Weekend.
What the fuck are you talking about?
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why? what do you think is on Mars that we will not see?
same kind of shit thats on the mooon that they will never let you see...
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huh?
what is on the moon that we haven't seen?
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huh?
what is on the moon that we haven't seen?
i am not the one who will/should reveal this to you
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huh?
what is on the moon that we haven't seen?
Manufacture there clones they do. Fight wars with clones they will.
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Manufacture there clones they do. Fight wars with clones they will.
very good young padawan
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very good young padawan
fucking nerds.
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didn't saddam put his WMDs on the moon?
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fucking nerds.
MUAHAHA@! :)
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didn't saddam put his WMDs on the moon?
Didn't you get the memo? We never landed on the moon. :)
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"May 25: A portion of the Martian landscape is seen from the Phoenix Mars Lander after it landed on the planet."
(http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/photoessay_4049_images/0526080220_M_1_450.jpg)
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that picture was clearly taken in Arizona or Sonora. And what's the silver post in the distance? ???
(http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/photoessay_4049_images/0526080220_M_1_450.jpg)
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just showed my friend who is a stage director the picture taken from mars, me and him both think something does not look right
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"The lander took a photo of the ground's polygonal pattern, similar to icy ground in the arctic regions of Earth."
(http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/TECH/space/05/27/mars.lander.ap/art.mars.surface2.jpg)
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There are two important reasons for engaging in space exploration:
one. It is basic scientific research. Basic scientific research leads to practical uses for what you discover.
Two. If you can build a device that can go to another planet and move around and analyze rock, you can build a device that can go somewhere and blow something to hell and back.
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dork.
240 calling someone a dork?
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Phoenix Lander May Have Uncovered Ice on Mars' Surface
Saturday, May 31, 2008
(http://www.foxnews.com/images/375191/1_68_mars_phoenix_ice.jpg)
May 31: Exhaust from Mars Lander descent engine has blown soil off surface to reveal either rock or ice.
TUCSON, Ariz. — Scientists overseeing the Phoenix Mars Lander said Saturday they believe the spacecraft's thrusters uncovered a large patch of ice on the Martian surface.
That bodes well for the mission's main goal of digging up ice and testing it for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.
Project scientists can't yet be completely certain but have reached a consensus that the material is ice that had been covered by just a few inches of dirt, said Peter Smith, a University of Arizona scientist who is the chief project investigator.
. . .
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,361171,00.html