Okay, I missed the first few minutes of the press conference. What happened to MRO UHF?

Seems the UHF radio on the MRO is out.

Seems not able to recieve uplink from Phoneix

MARDI has a microphone, although it may not be turned on. http://www.msss.com/phoenix/mardi/index.html

There's a lot more to that story, though, and this isn't the thread for it.

A "transient event" affected MRO's UHF so they were unable to uplink Phoenix commands.

A "transient event" - they are working on turning it back on.

HiRISE image of the probe on the surface

OMG!!! Crater/parachute fusion!!!!

OMG, that parachute image just got way better!

HiRISE steals the show!

OMG What an image!

Wallpaper of the year!

Looks like that bright thing to the south is the parachute. heat shield to the northeast.

How well did I do

So it's the backshell to the south, and something else to the north.

Doug

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! And they managed to image Phoenix on the surface in color!

Can't wait to get that parachute in colour not-via-a-web-feed

Doug

Wow!

Click to view attachment

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/230826m...olor-browse.jpg

It looks like Phoenix "stained" most of the meso-polygon it landed in. (Also looks like it's smack dab in the middle of a meso-polygon as well)

-Mike

So THAT'S what that crater image was on the HiWall...

OMFG!!!1 gets back on chair

For the first time, I'm going to get that HiRISE image in full, and get it printed as big as it takes to see that in full.

That is stunning.

Meteorology note - the weather report had a diurnal temperature range from a high of -30C and a low of -80C. I gather that the frost point of CO2 is around -123C that we would look for at night later in the season. This varies slightly on Mars depending on the elevation/pressure. One can get a feel for this with the following phase diagram (noting Phoenix is at about 8 millibars).

http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/CHEMWEEK/pdf/CarbonDioxide.pdf

One can parenthetically note that the -80C low is closer to the CO2 frost point on Earth (given Earth's higher pressure) that may barely allow CO2 frost to form in Antarctica at times. I've heard about this happening, though not too many details as of yet.

Well, I think the rover paradigm, while enormously useful in certain cases, may be needless here. The idea is that a presumably isotropic sheet of ice is under the soil, and that's what we're looking for. There's no doubt that there's SOME science that could be done by exploring this big flat area and the far-off topography, but that runs a distant second or third in terms of priorities here.

Rovers are sort of wheeled surrogates for us. But how would an earthworm explore Mars if it could build spacecraft? Or a hawk? Or a tuna?

I think the next steps in Mars exploration might get away from the rover paradigm. At least, we ought to make sure of the scientific goals and the terrain before we design hardware. For example, I could see a mission that fires bullets at an exposed cliff and then analyzes the samples that chip off. Or one that puts very bit of non-instrument mass into the deepest drilling possible.

At risk of overgeneralizing, I think the more we pursue geology goals, the more we'll turn to rovers, and the more we pursue astrobiological goals, the more we'll consider alternatives to rovers. And ultimately the highest price tags for exploration will be paid by astrobiology, lest we'd be doing this on the Moon or Venus.

I'm with you ...
now to find it on HiRise site..did a quick look and didn't find it.
jb

As I understand the HiBlog post, the full res image is noisy as hell so that's why they reduced the resolution greatly.

They also promised (or implied) eventual image cleanup, enhancement and color on that image down the road at yesterday's press conference.

Hopefully, it will still go up on the HiWall here. All it is showing now is that Heimdall image.

Geez, good time to wrap up the briefing, it was turning into MRO UHF recovery briefing, not Phoenix briefing...

I was glad they asked a lot of questions about it. Peter Smith probably was too, as he said he was just then hearing about it.

I'll shut up the old one now - but this one will probably run until the press con after next.

There will probably be more news stories about the mission today due to the UHF issue than if the problem hadn't occured. The press do like reporting on problems lol

It must be very frustrating for the science team though - having to wait a little longer.

Anyone heard about Greenbank ? Was it possible do receive the Phoenix signal ?

Robert

Did anyone find a more complete HiRISE surface shot encompassing also the backshell? Did they crop it out due to lack of color coverage or what? I didn't quite understand if MRO succeeded in both imaging tries so this color shot is actually the second one?

Full image here.

More here.

I liked the mars weather graphic they posted..
Is it posted somewhere or did they just create it for the press conference.
be great to have that up on the web site
cheers
jb

I missed the briefing, and I have a question about the parachute. I see an image http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/230826m...olor-browse.jpg of the lander and what looks to me like a crater where the heatshield bounced and a burnt heatshield, both to the southeast of the lander. I also see no sign of the parachute or backshell, and the link for the parachute image on http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-hardware.php is broken. Did anyone see an image of the parachute?

Edit: I see it from a post above, thanks! So, do they have a better latitude/longitude for the lander reported yet? Also, when latitudes are reported, are they planetographic or planetocentric?

Thanks!

That was my understanding from the press briefing. The first HiRISE image (11 hours after landing) was not precisely aimed at Phoenix, as its position had not yet been nailed down. It was captured in the wider B&W portion of the scan, but not in the central zone with colour. By the time of the second image (22 hours?), the location of Phoenix was precisely known, so MRO was able to capture it in colour, using the central zone of the HiRISE camera.

I missed the exact coordinates, but you can figure it out from the green cross here.

Here you go...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/phoenix/col...r2__800-600.jpg

Fascinating that the backshell stained an area about half as big as the stain around Phoenix. That impact must have been pretty hard. I hope that minimizes the worries about the propulsion as a contaminant.

That is exactly right. In fact, in the EDL+11 image, we at first only noticed the chute, the lander is barely visible (low sun angle, one of the solar arrays is in shadow).

Question on the sliding rock:

Is it possible the helium venting right after landing moved the rock?

It seems like the trail would have been blown away if that had happened.

Hi Guy,

Any chance the first image'll be released as well?

Getting bored of martian doughnuts - so I un-philed this one

At today's confrence they said they believe it's movement was caused by landing thruster blasts.

Nice work, how did you do this?

Mick.

Truly a classic image, that hirise descent shot!

Has anyone else noticed that the impact points for both heatshield and backshell appear dark in the hirise shot? Presumably this means that there's no ice very close to the surface, otherwise I'd expect to see some bright debris or at least bright regions inside the impact craters. There shouldn't have been much time for exposed ice to evaporate?

Anyone recall how deep Oppy's heatshield crater was? 20 cm or so?

Before the arm is even un-stowed, Phoenix has already excavated the polar region, well at least it's heatshield did!

My question is why is the heatshield impact site so dark if this region is nothing but ice just under the surface?

When we start digging are we also going to see equally dark material?

(EDIT: looks like fredk, previous post, noticed the same thing... Maybe if the ice surface is highly reflective and the sun is not in the right place for specular
reflection then it would appear dark? ie, is it dark because we are seeing a reflection of dark sky?)

It's actually the backshell that looks to me as the one that's been excavating anything. The heatshield impact site appears black, maybe due to charred debris off the shield?

Reasonable idea, but Oppy's heatshield impact site excavated a few inches at least and did not leave much fine charred debris to cover the impact site.

Don't forget about the burned cork.

Both MER heat shields seemed to invert, i.e. folded back over on themselves after splitting apart, exposing a bright shiny metallic interior which was so relfective in the Rover images. This time it looks as if the heatshield landed shiny-side down without breaking into pieces.... assuming of course it is manufactured the same way as the MER heatshields.

Can anyone say what the interior of the Phoenix heat shield looks like?