I hope it's not

Surface
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Fine Dust
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Basaltic
Sandy
Soil

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Icy Soil


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Ice-9

!!

I just tuned in after a very tiring day - but glad I still did -I never expected the parachute-shot to be THAT spectacular, and having always loved those oblique images, well.. I'm speechless.

Nico

Hi Emily:

I was told: 68.218830N 234.250778E, IAU 2000 Areocentric

I will update my map as soon as I figure out how to convert everything over to ArcMAP, so that I can incorporate the HiRISE images at full resolution for the whole map.

It looks like my career of finding landers before the orbiters can take pictures of them is over! ...but that's good, actually. Man, what a great camera!

Now, we can all start looking at the MPL search images with a little better idea of what a Phoenix-like lander looks like on the surface of Mars. But throw in a little more dust!

-Tim.

I know this is a little off-topic, but Dot.DK, I agree with you that the oblique Hirise image is quite dramatic, and I am also wondering if this experience with Phoenix will incite the Hirise team to take more such images. . .

Do you think it would be as dramatic without the parachute to give it a sense of scale? That was a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

--Emily

Here's my identification of the hills visible in the SW horizon (colored green). My estimate of the lander location is also marked with a green dot. Not even pretending to be accurate, just trying to get oriented. It looks as the best part of the surface panorama is still to come, as the Heimdal crater walls should be on the opposite side (NE).
Click to view attachment


Also, I tried to match the Hirise view of the lander with the available overhead mosaics. Not the most beautiful thing but a nice match.
Click to view attachment

Yes, that's what I got as well.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed as to the visibility of Heimdal. There's a topographic rise just east of the landing site that might obscure it from view. I'm also anxious to see what the small "pedestal crater" to the WNW looks like. It's only 40 meters or so tall, but it's also less than 7 km away.

-Tim.

I think this might just be the first lander that Tim didn't find even from the HiRISE images. No, wait, that would be Opportunity, but that one was easy... The first one that was not positively known where it was might be more like it... Hmm...



I hope personally they do a repeat with MSL...

For sure it's unique, Emily, but imagine a cratered plain in summer strewn with dust devils.

Interesting blog by a member of the Phoenix team, with details about the uhf radio problem.

http://spacenerd.blogspot.com/

Edit: it appears that he's a member of the MRO team at JPL, currently working on Phoenix comms.

The Highrise folks are looking for a shadow cast on the crater wall by the parachute, maybe we can help find it

New images I see?

The RB and RC frames are only 256x256, but here's some rough color made simply by resizing them to fit the RA frame.

http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/ssi_index_0001_0020.html

It looks like tonight's pictures came via MRO, so it seems the UHF is working despite what Emily said.

From :http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/...20080527a.html:

PAGE NOT FOUND
The page you requested either doesn't exist anymore, or was moved.

Here's the proper link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/...-20080527a.html

(See above.)

According to the caption the parachute is 20 km in front of the crater. At that distance a 12 m parachute will subtend 2 arc minutes, or roughly 10% of the diameter of the sun at Mars distance. I doubt there will be a shadow.

Not to mention the image is really noisy, finding a dark spot would be quite difficult...

Phoenix landed at 68 degrees north latitude, that is 3 degrees north of the Martian arctic circle. Does that mean that Phoenix will see the midnight sun, or is summer too far advanced for that? As a matter of fact, what season is it exactly over there?

False color zoom of the area immediately around the Phoenix Mars lander:

Click to view attachment

Color HiRISE image converted to grayscale, then converted to false color.

The area seems further disturbed than I thought, out to about 20 m. (Note absence of greenish-yellow zones in immediate lander area.)

In this image, the least basalt rock showing area seems to be at the 12 o'clock vector in this image.
The biggest basalt rock showing area (disturbed) area is right at the 11 o'clock vector in this image. Another basalty rock-showing area (trench?) is a parallel crease just off the 8 o'clock position in the image.

It'll be interesting to compare surface images taken from the lander at these locations.

-Mike

[EDIT: used the term "basalt rock showing area" to imply that the area has been modified and revealed a darker substrate. Some areas are darker than others and likely have more rocky grains showing rather than dust.]

Peter Smith said today the sun wouldn't set until August. To see the solar geometry, fiddle around with Mars24 (download from GISS website).

Good news that the UHF on MRO is working. It wasn't working as of the time that I got the last update in the press room.

Don't fret too much about the lost day. Remember that the rover teams planned to lose one of every three days -- I'm sure Phoenix' mission success schedule is similarly padded. It's a bummer a day was lost so early, but they'll be rocking and rolling before you know it.

--Emily

Any word on what might've caused the UHF anomaly, Emily?

Juramike,
Great pic. Does the general triangle-ness of the disturbed area align with the descent thrusters? As to why the disturbed area looks darker, I think what causes that is the small-scale features start out smooth, and as they are roughed up (or fine particles swept away), you see more shadows, causing the ground to look darker, but it isn't really darker, ie if you looked from close to the sun angle, the brightness would be close to the same.

My analogy is looking down at a piece of paper with the light coming at an angle from the side. Start with it flat, even slightly bent it will still be "bright". Now crumple it up and open it up again, and the shadows will make the paper look "darker" even though it hasn't changed. Would probably make a great YouTube video.

Looks like the wind is blowing

http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_584.jpg

--- quotes removed ---

I enhanced that image a bit to bring out the reflection in the mirror to show direction:

So I am guessing that the team won't be on Mars time?

You know, I swear I read that they were, and it is hard to imagine why. Presumably, the Sun is still skirting the horizon at "night" producing sunset conditions for a period, but still.

The sun doesn't set, but there is a "night" when the sun is too low to provide adequate power to the solar panels. The project team is actually on the opposite of Mars time -- they wake up in the Mars evening, receive the evening download of data, analyze the data and prepare the next day's commands during the Mars night, upload the new commands in the Mars morning, and sleep during the Mars day.

Got it!

Click to view attachment

Here is a coordinated graphic showing the most recent Polar surface mosaic (http://fawkes4.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_613.jpg) coordinated with the HiRISE image. I used the vectors to the backshell to line up the two images (using the Phoenix mosaic azimuth values).

Click to view attachment

The dark blue trenches in the false color image should be towards the 300 vector as seen in this view.

There is already an image acquired in this general direction and and yes, it is the terrain right behind the DVD!! (Link here for a color composite)

Click to view attachment

The image is SS001EFF896308546_10D10RAM1.jpg. The upper left corner of the image shows the trench margin. If this is correct, more images should show more the of the gravelly, rocky trench stretching towards the horizon and more towards the 300 degree vector. This trench disappears behind the the western solar panel.

-Mike

Hi folks,

I have to say that I really really appreciate this site and all of you.

Your words are right on SFJCody. The dance that the teams must choreograph with these orbiters and landers takes a lot of dedicated people, spread out in many locations (Pasadena, Tucson, Denver, Germany, San Deigo and even DC ... ) who take their work seriously and work long hours. But what makes it seem so amazing to those of us who do this, is that this work gives us a sense that these are not machines that are doing our bidding, but rather they are actual extensions of our being. Like a stunt pilot who becomes one with her aircraft, or a jazz musician who blends seamlessly into the horn and the band, these complex machines become a part of us and part of our spirit.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. When my LMA friends, Wayne, Tim P and Tim G suggested that I seriously look into taking the Phoenix descent image, I had to push it. They were right on many levels. I am embarrassed to say that I never once looked into what we might see in the background as MRO/HiRISE scanned over the landing ellipse. We had the viewing geometry at our figure tips but we did not look. In fact we did not look at the wide shot with Heimdall in the background until late on Sol 1. I saw the image late yesterday and, like many people who see it the first time, I though it was a fake. A couple of minutes later I had it on my laptop in an email attachment from the HiRISE team. I had been so focused on whether the image would reveal sufficient parachute fault data (and earlier on whether it would result in a risk to MRO's UHF data collection during entry) that I failed to imagine the big picture. Maybe I couldn't.

SFJCody, your point about this image reminding us of the great scale of what is out there to explore is true. This image reminds me of the humility (and audacity) of what we are doing and how small we really are and how lucky I am to be able to do this work. These images take us places that may even be as poetic as scientific.

-Rob Manning (still Mars Program Chief Engineer)

Windy Animation
Click to view attachment
Astro0

Thanks Rob for finding time for us in your busy schedule. I can't find the words to say how much awe we all hold you in. It's not just the ingenuity and genius that you have all been blessed with, but its also the drive to take chances and go out on a limb like you did personally with this image. I am reminded of the words of President Teddy Roosevelt:

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

So please continue to dare to do those mighty things. That's what heroes are made of, and this week you and your team are our heroes!

I'll second that, Dan.

Now Rob, don't get all overcome by modesty when we call you one of our heroes. Just promise that, when one or the other of us comes into town and you happen to have an evening free, you'll let us take you out for a beer.

-the other Doug

Either that or we've found water!

(Even better, Rob, You take US out for a beer!)

I'm frankly speechless (and that's difficult to happen...) beholding all this HiRISE stuff...
and that windy animation...

About HRSC images...Michel Denis told me that the images were indeed attempted but the result is very uncertain, it was also referred that the data is now all on ground, but he added that, if anything is in the images, by no way HRSC results can approach the exceptional image made by MRO HIRISE of the parachute and Phoenix.

Rob...can I hug you?

It says in the comments of the HiBlog entry for the parachute image that apparently the image was taken about 5 seconds after heat shield jettison. Now, here's a rough estimate of the distance of the heatshield to the lander using simulated data from the Phoenix EDL HUD animation:

At shield jettison the stack was moving at about 100 m/s (about 107 actually, but for the sake of simplicity...). 5 seconds later the lander was slowed down to around 85 m/s. Let's approximate the deceleration as linear so that gives 3 m/s*s and the distance travelled by the chute/lander stack is 460 m.
For the heat shield there are two simplest options to consider:

1) Neglecting further gravitational acceleration and air drag and propagating the 100 m/s velocity at separation gives 500 meters travel distance.
2) Applying a rough estimate of vertical gravitational acceleration to the heatshield. At separation it was roughly moving 45deg off vertical so H and V components of the speed are roughly equal at 75 meters/s. After 5 s the vertical velocity would be 93 m/s. Averaging the initial and final velocities gives (100+120)/2 = 110 m/s.

The distance between the aeroshell and heatshield after 5 seconds would then be somewhere in the range of (500-460) and (550-460) meters. That's 40 to 90 meters.

What's the point of all this? I'm suggesting the heatshield should be visible in that crater backdrop image as well, probably as a dark speck. I couldn't find the length of the parachute cords which to use as a yardstick in this oblique perspective (and probably foreshortened) view, but 100 meters looks comfortably within the HiRISE coverage judging by the pixel separation of backshell and parachute and assuming chute cord length of around 30 m.

It feels pretty great to have my layman opinions on planetary exploration confirmed by the Mars Program Chief Engineer!

UMSF.com is like a fragment of the old days of the internet; full of knowledgeable, friendly people- professionals, enthusiasts and interested onlookers alike all sharing ideas and information.

Hum, look like that Hirise team wil release full frame image of the EDL of Phoenix : http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008579_9020

If you enter any number in the URL, it "opens" a page with that number so I'm thinking that's just a glitch with their web.

Okay Gordan .

An other question : they don't have put the Sol2 pictures here : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/..._archive_1.html but, they are visible on the index. Why?

from the wind animation it seems the 'string' of the wind sensor is permanently bent... is that right?

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/phoenix...27mroradio.html

" Data link between Phoenix and MRO restored"

Hey guys, as you might know a lot of the color images that came down last night weren't full resolution, so they suffered a bit for it, but I played around a bit and with slinted's suggestions came up with these pretty images: http://picasaweb.google.com/joshcryer/MarsPhoenixLander/

Anyway, I just wanted to return some appreciation for all the hard work everyone in the enthusiast and professional community puts in. I'll be updating that album within a few minutes of them being uploaded on the site. I hope to improve my knowledge of this field considerably more!

Take care all.

PS I know the skies are wrong in my images, don't shoot me!

Hey Josh,

Nice pics, looking forward to seeing what you do with the ones that follow.

BTW: welcome aboard! About time you were here!

Wecome Josh nice pics you have made

Here is a try to making a colorization of the Hirise-EDL pic :
http://www.astrosurf.com/merimages/Upload/...orisationV2.jpg

Actually, the team is on Mars time, I think it has to do with the MRO/Odyssey passes.

Actually, I found the Opportunity lander YEARS before HiRISE imaged it!

But it is true that MOC got it before I did. I had a very Eagle-like crater identified, but since we couldn't see much outside the crater, we didn't know it was Eagle until MOC imaged the site.



MARDI will be the first to image the MSL landing site, and I'm a team member!

Mars is cool.

-Tim.

Thanks, I hadn't realized that was a mirror. I imagine it's an essentially fully reflective mirror. Since it gives us a tiny view of the near zenith sky, it shows very nicely how much darker the sky is overhead than near the horizon (metadata says image altitude is about 11 degrees). I'd also be interested in how the sky hue differs at zenith.

Not sure if you've seen this, but the first HiRISE observation (T+11h) is also up: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-hardware_11.php

Regarding this: with low sun angles and exaggerated topography, is this what we should be looking for in MPL landing zone? Note Phoenix' backshell ended upside down as well. The only thing that consistently stands out is the parachute and if it's buried in dust over the years, well... The fact Phoenix landed at the edge of the 3-sigma ellipse doesn't help constrain things, either.