Thanks for the UTC times, Rui. Looks like it won't be as bad for me as I thought, landing at around 2 A.M. local time. That's pretty manageable. What's NOT manageable is trying to get some sleep afterwards.

You're welcome ugordan...

Sleep? Who said anything about sleeping?...

EDITED: I've posted a corrected version since the original one had a small error on the timing of May 25 first news briefing.

Terrific; thanks, Rui!

I'm just glad that 26 May is a US holiday (Memorial Day); gonna dose up on the caffeine & go the duration, then crash all next day...

I'm not glad that the 23rd is holiday here and not the 26...

Crash?...Don't you dare to use that word! We're quite sensitive this days...

LOL, I have a holiday on 22nd and the Friday is off so we can have an extended weekend. Anyways, a holiday is better than no holiday!

Eek! Apologies profound, you're right...I meant 'shamelessly sleep throughout the next day, blissfully aware of the fact that Phoenix has landed and is safe & sound'...just by way of clarification!

Next time, you'd better use the Brasilian Portuguese word

Hmmm. All this talk of holidays.
Just spare a thought for the guys and gals at the DSN who, no matter when, holiday or not will be working to ensure that the data gets back to Earth for everyone at the mission and of course UMSF to see.

As for me, it will be Monday morning talking to the gathered public, waiting for that landing confirmation signal to come through the Goldstone complex and then, I'm hoping, the first images and surface science operations coming down through our 70-metre dish here in Canberra.

Think of us while you're putting together those cool (and I mean arctic) panoramas.

Go Phoenix!
Astro0

PS: If anyone is interested, check out my TV report on the Phoenix EDL at http://www.abc.net.au/australiawide/storie...05/s2249381.htm
The crazy things I do for space exploration outreach!

OUTSTANDING!!!

Glen, you wildman, you, you're my new hero!!! Brilliant linkage, terrific execution, best damn outreach in mass media I've seen maybe ever!

Thanks Rui, it'll be very handy.
I think I have had a bright idea ( )
I printed your Schedule, found an old hard calendar and taped it on it. Actualy, the calendar is in Landscape format and I taped it in portrait. Now, the schedule goes all the way from february to december.
What is left and still visible of the calendar is : January 2004
How do you call this? Supersticious ?
Go Phoeniox, GO.

Glad you didnt simulate the "lander separation" step

Now THERE's something REALLY cool...

And ugordan...forget what I said earlier...that's my holiday too and I have the Friday off...just as you...

Excellent job. Where's the swearbox!!! <clinck>, <clinck>, <clinck>
And may I use your own words: "Woah! That was F A N T A S T I C !"

In my head, AstroO was SOOOOoo different!!

Brilliant way of touching the details. It's a dramatic demonstration that freefall on Earth, is about the same as falling under an enormous parachute on Mars.

Doug

Brilliant Glen, absolutely brilliant!

Have to say tho, I hope Phoenix doesn't land on the same part of its anatomy that you did...

Very interesting "Phoenix Diary" entry from Tom Pike, one of the British scientists involved in the Phoenix mission, on the BBC's website today...

"...the first images we should be seeing will be of the Phoenix lander and its immediate surroundings. These photos might not be of huge scientific interest but we'll all be feeling like proud parents in Tucson as we share these first pictures with the rest of the world. Or we could all be standing dumbstruck as the images fail to appear and we realise the mission most of us have spent over a decade preparing for lies as one more piece of space junk on the cruel surface of Mars. "

( Hmmm, Tom Pike... now why does that name sound familiar..? )

Heyyy...great interview, Stu!!! I don't know how you & Rui do it!!!

Microfossils...hadn't thought of that possibility, frankly. Fact of the matter is, though, that we might not be able to positively identify them as such even if they're there. More questions, more questions...

Well, I've found that if you ask politely, and emphasise the public interest in the mission, the scientists are usually very happy to share their thoughts and answer questions, and the Mars community is especially generous with their time and resources. In fact, it has to be said that I've never been turned down or ignored by a single NASA person I've written to. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, I can't say the same for people from other agencies.

Very similar to what was said at the Phoenix Science News Briefing from the 14th of May. From what I understood the first picture to be returned will be of the solar arrays to confirm that they have opened followed by other photos confirming correct deployment of the MET mast and the opening of the bio barrier covering the arm.

The whole of the press conference is available at Space-Multimedia. They achieve all the scheduled programs from NasaTV. Can’t say I know who runs the site but it’s a great resource. Never have to miss a press conference again.

Very similar yes, but I always think it's great when these guys take the time to do things like that and share their time with us when they're so busy

Couldn’t agree more. If I was them I would find it hard to answer questions from us when on top of preparing for the landing many of Rui’s interviewees are full time academics with everything that entails. I think it just goes to show how the online community is growing and developing more recognition by the professionals.

Tom Pike might be getting nervous but at the moment I am almost as bad as I was before my daughter was born

Not enough websites to keep an eye on during the Phoenix landing? Well, don't worry, here's another one...

Phoenix blog

With the exception of "weird" locales that do not keep daylight time and do variou weird things, The US divides into 4 (excluding Alaska/Hawaii/etc) time zones.

Eastern time currently is Eastern Daylight Time, so it's 4 hours later than Pacific time.

Eastern / Central / Mountain / Pacific.

I have utterly no idea how the <expletive deleted> changed times for the start and end of daylight time match anything else the world is doing.

PS. It's summer now in Texas. Fireflies are blinking. We're about 4 to 6 weeks away from the end of Summer (part 1). Then we get some 2 to 2 1/2 months of INFERNO.

I plan on being in the room where I think the pictures will go live, where 2 years previously, I was watching a satellite that I had build as we found out piece by piece that the rocket blew up 2 years previously, while talking to the press at the same time that we were trying to figure out what was going on ourselves... It was sad, but, hey, it happens. It will also be the same room that 3 months before, I had watched as confirmation that MRO had successfully entered orbit, thus ensuring me a job for some time to come. I wish the Phoenix team the best of luck, although I must confess, since I first heard about it 5 years ago, my sub conscience has been expecting that the mission will crash (I don't know why, but during MER, I never had those feelings...) Anyways, I hope my sub conscience is wrong, it should be an exciting time!

I think a small dose of pessimism is a sensible cushion against dissapointment. I had a similar feeling about cosmos 1, and sadly that was bourn out. But then I also felt grim forebodings about the launch of Dawn and New Horizons, and they have been great succeses to date. But then I'm not in the space industry, so maybe my intuition's not as finely tuned...GULP>

I like to think that NASA has passed the
point on the learning curve where failed
Mars landings are frequent and that from
here on out failed landings will be rare.

And the last state of the Union to not keep Daylight savings just happens to be Arizona, home of the Phoenix control center... It does, though, make it convenient, as Tucson will be on the same time as JPL for the entire mission...

Simon

Amen to that!

Actually, there is one other state (Hawaii), but yes, it is nice to be in the same time as JPL for most of the time.

"...And the last state of the Union to not keep Daylight savings just happens to be Arizona, home ..."

Except, unless it's changed since I was trapped out out in the desert southwest on a 2 1/2 week vacation while Pathfinder landed, the Navaho and perhaps other indian reservations in Arizona.. they do keep daylight savings time.. so shift out of synch with the rest of the state!

Did you realize that we're now counting days until landing using fingers in only one hand?

I thought we were counting down to landing by the INCREASING numbers of tums, rollaids, pepcid, zantac, prilosec... etc antacid pills the flight ops team is consuming.

I'm already using hours in the countdown...

111 Hours to Mars as I write this!

If anyone wants one of these...

Click to view attachment

... just click here

You just anticipated me!
I was coming here to post that same image!

You forgot Peanuts!

You know, not to be pedantic, but you can't have. UMSF didn't exist back when the MERs landed, even in its old guise of mer-project or whatever it was.

Believe it or not this is the first Mars landing for UMSF!

James

Sorry Doug, I hadn't read your post. The list has been amended accordingly! (and you now get two links to Mars Live for the price of one, very cunning...! )

Are you sure? I'm sure there was some kind of pre-MER landing forum up and running then... ? Oh well, thanks for pointing that out, I've corrected it.

Thread 1 - Feb 8th 2004 What's that, about sol 35A/15B?

Was the 'yellow forum' up and running then?

perhaps the newmars forum? that's where I first saw the link to UMSF (or whatever it was called then).

Maybe Stu's thinking of the Beagle 2 Yahoo Group I had at the time.

UMSF's previous life as mer.rlproject.com started in Feb '04.

Doug

Before arriving here I used to be at the Mars yellow forum, but only after the landing...that's where I met Stu and knew that this forum existed...
And I saw you there yesterday Doug...

Yeah - I've not posted there in years, but they were saying nice things about the DEM movie, so I thought I'd give them the link to the proper version that isn't horribly compressed like the APOD version

Doug

Cool coincidence...I hadn't visit the place for a long time and there you were...you and ES...

Yep, that's the one. I KNEW I wasn't going through all that alone!

Perhaps it's time to resurrect this thread: How Did You Find Us?

...and my 50th birthday !

Yep, gonna be a peanut-eatin' fool Sunday afternoon (PDT); as a bonus, they do go exceedingly well with beer!

<panic>
What kind of peanuts?! Shelled, unshelled? Spanish? Honey roasted? Chocolate covered! Aggh!
</panic>