The Phoenix Has Landed
May. 26th, 2008 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIt's good to get around to commenting on a "real world" event, even if the world is a different one than our own. I happened to start the live video feed of the NASA channel last night just in time to see the final minutes of the Phoenix probe's approach to Mars and its landing there. Whether the landing would succeed or not was something I had been worrying about; touching down using legs but with no way to spot rocks higher than those legs and steer away from them just seems more risky to me than using airbags and bouncing. On the other hand, while the Mars Polar Lander tried to land on legs and disappeared, the Beagle 2 lander tried to land using airbags and also disappeared...
This morning, I managed to see a first picture from the landing site. (By the evening, it was in colour...) The lumpy ground made me think at once of permafrost in our own Arctic, and as with all the other Martian landing sites it seemed unique in its own subtle way once enough thought was put into it. Landing in the Martian Arctic, though, seems to make for a time-limited mission. Where the Mars rovers have kept rolling and rolling and rolling until I'm not following them as closely as I once did (which seems to somehow comment on the constant demands of some to "Make it interesting!"), in the Martian winter Phoenix will end up encased in dry ice. That seems about as far from flames to rise out of as you can get...
This morning, I managed to see a first picture from the landing site. (By the evening, it was in colour...) The lumpy ground made me think at once of permafrost in our own Arctic, and as with all the other Martian landing sites it seemed unique in its own subtle way once enough thought was put into it. Landing in the Martian Arctic, though, seems to make for a time-limited mission. Where the Mars rovers have kept rolling and rolling and rolling until I'm not following them as closely as I once did (which seems to somehow comment on the constant demands of some to "Make it interesting!"), in the Martian winter Phoenix will end up encased in dry ice. That seems about as far from flames to rise out of as you can get...