A one digit number…9 days to Mars, 216 hours of waiting that permit to make the last revisions, correct the spacecrafts trajectory, if necessary and to…bite some nails in advance.
That’s what happen when you have no control over the events and your mind goes on a tour starting in the pleasant Confidence Town, passing through the joyful Excitement City and ending in the troubled Vila Ansiedade…
After some fears manifested yesterday at Live Q&A with Barry Goldstein, Phoenix Project Manager by some readers (where, I must admit, I am included) concerning Phoenix’s landing site, nothing like go out and check what we are really facing here…
See that image? It is a shaded relief map of the area in and around the site where the lander is expected to reach martian ground (the center of the targeted landing area is at the center of the set of ellipses superimposed on the map), obtained from images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
And what jumps almost immediately to the eye?
Green!
What’s the meaning of this colour, beyond the fact of being indeed a beautiful colour…?
The areas where green rules indicate that these have few large rocks, which are, obviously, a potential hazard for the mission, to be more specific each hectare of the green-coded areas has between 0 and three rocks with a width of 1.5 meters or more.
On the opposite side we can see red, which is indeed a colour to avoid…
Comparing it with the green ones, in each red hectare it is possible to find more than 19 rocks with that same size, 1.5 meters or more…scary to think about it…
Bright green indicates areas with few large rocks on this shaded relief map of the area in and around the targeted landing site for NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.
When Phoenix reaches Mars, the plans were made taking in consideration that the spacecraft must hit a specific target at the top of Mars’ atmosphere. Why is this important?
This will permit Phoenix to have a 66 percent chance (yes…33% is still a large number for my nervous system…) to land in the smallest of the three ellipses seen on the image above and a 99 percent (1% always freaks me out…) of touching the arctic inside the largest of the three.
It is also possible to see in the image two rectangles highlighted with dark outlines, these show the location of two specific images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment: image PSP_001906_2485 near the center of the target ellipses, and image PSP_001972_2485 at the western tip of the largest ellipse, this last one is not very tempting…
Fortunately it stands in a area almost outside the landing ellipse, not very tempting why? Because it show us a ground with a relative high abundance of rocks, it is also possible to see a terrain patterned and fractured into polygons. For scale, an illustration of the Phoenix lander, which is about 5.5 meters by 2 meters, was artificially superimposed on a full-resolution subset of HiRISE image (right). Similar polygonal patterns can be found on Earth in areas where repeated freezing and thawing takes place as it is the case of Antarctica.
To give you an idea of what similarities we are talking about check the image below.
In the left image it is possible to see this polygonal terrain (each polygon is a few meters across) within Phoenix’s landing site before the winter frost disappeared with the arrival of spring, the right image show us an aerial view of Antarctica’s ground…see the likeness? Like being at home…why are we worrying about?...
Now that I’ve fooled myself during the minutes I spent writing this I’ll just return to anxiety mode and buy me one of those mythical little bottles of anti-nailbiting varnish…
If before I was a monument to serenity I am now, that we are this close to the Red Planet, starting to have some problems breathing… in fact, this is my first landing on Mars, on “my” planet…but that is a story to another post…
That’s what happen when you have no control over the events and your mind goes on a tour starting in the pleasant Confidence Town, passing through the joyful Excitement City and ending in the troubled Vila Ansiedade…
After some fears manifested yesterday at Live Q&A with Barry Goldstein, Phoenix Project Manager by some readers (where, I must admit, I am included) concerning Phoenix’s landing site, nothing like go out and check what we are really facing here…
See that image? It is a shaded relief map of the area in and around the site where the lander is expected to reach martian ground (the center of the targeted landing area is at the center of the set of ellipses superimposed on the map), obtained from images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
And what jumps almost immediately to the eye?
Green!
What’s the meaning of this colour, beyond the fact of being indeed a beautiful colour…?
The areas where green rules indicate that these have few large rocks, which are, obviously, a potential hazard for the mission, to be more specific each hectare of the green-coded areas has between 0 and three rocks with a width of 1.5 meters or more.
On the opposite side we can see red, which is indeed a colour to avoid…
Comparing it with the green ones, in each red hectare it is possible to find more than 19 rocks with that same size, 1.5 meters or more…scary to think about it…
Bright green indicates areas with few large rocks on this shaded relief map of the area in and around the targeted landing site for NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.
When Phoenix reaches Mars, the plans were made taking in consideration that the spacecraft must hit a specific target at the top of Mars’ atmosphere. Why is this important?
This will permit Phoenix to have a 66 percent chance (yes…33% is still a large number for my nervous system…) to land in the smallest of the three ellipses seen on the image above and a 99 percent (1% always freaks me out…) of touching the arctic inside the largest of the three.
It is also possible to see in the image two rectangles highlighted with dark outlines, these show the location of two specific images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment: image PSP_001906_2485 near the center of the target ellipses, and image PSP_001972_2485 at the western tip of the largest ellipse, this last one is not very tempting…
Fortunately it stands in a area almost outside the landing ellipse, not very tempting why? Because it show us a ground with a relative high abundance of rocks, it is also possible to see a terrain patterned and fractured into polygons. For scale, an illustration of the Phoenix lander, which is about 5.5 meters by 2 meters, was artificially superimposed on a full-resolution subset of HiRISE image (right). Similar polygonal patterns can be found on Earth in areas where repeated freezing and thawing takes place as it is the case of Antarctica.
To give you an idea of what similarities we are talking about check the image below.
In the left image it is possible to see this polygonal terrain (each polygon is a few meters across) within Phoenix’s landing site before the winter frost disappeared with the arrival of spring, the right image show us an aerial view of Antarctica’s ground…see the likeness? Like being at home…why are we worrying about?...
Now that I’ve fooled myself during the minutes I spent writing this I’ll just return to anxiety mode and buy me one of those mythical little bottles of anti-nailbiting varnish…
If before I was a monument to serenity I am now, that we are this close to the Red Planet, starting to have some problems breathing… in fact, this is my first landing on Mars, on “my” planet…but that is a story to another post…
While that post doesn't arrive take the time to read our Stuart Atkinson perspective of martian landings and also kicking the butt of of the anti-space exploration league...
9 days to Mars!
Onward Phoenix!
DON'T FORGET! If you are considering a participation in the Through the Eyes of the Phoenix Competition, the deadline is coming soon: this SUNDAY, May 18, 11:59PM UTC, is the limit!
Ah! Don't miss this!...Impressive...
Images credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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