NASA spacecraft lands on Mars and sends back first historic pictures from unexplored area of red planet
A NASA spacecraft has landed on Mars and beamed back the first pictures of an unexplored region of the red planet.
The Phoenix Mars Lander has plunged into the atmosphere of the northern polar region to start 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.
Less than two hours after landing it beamed back 48 black-and-white images.
Historic: One of the first colour images from the Phoenix Mars Lander shows an unexplored region of the Red Planet
Red planet: The image shows the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars
The pictures included the horizon of the
arctic plain and ground with polygon patterns similar to what can be found in Earth's permafrost regions.
Cheers swept through mission control when the touchdown signal was finally raised after a nail-biting descent. Engineers and scientists hugged and high-fived one another.
"In my dreams it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it went," project manager Barry Goldstein said.
Phoenix's target landing site was 30-mile-wide shallow valley in the high northern latitudes similar in location to Earth's Greenland or northern Alaska.
The site was chosen because images from space spied evidence of a reservoir of frozen water close to the surface.
Phoenix is equipped with an 8-foot-long arm capable of digging trenches in the soil to get to ice that is believed to be buried up to a foot deep.
Then it will analyse the dirt and ice samples for traces of organic compounds, the chemical building blocks of life.
The lander also will study whether the ice ever melted at some point in Mars' history when the planet had a warmer environment than the current harsh, cold one it currently has.
Scientists do not expect to find water in its liquid form at the Phoenix landing site because it's too frigid. But they say that if raw ingredients of life exist anywhere on the planet, they likely would be preserved in the ice.
Touchdown: Control room members Ed Sedivy, left, and Peter Smith celebrate as they get word that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander arrives on the Red Planet safely
Phoenix, however, cannot detect signs of alien life that may exist now or once existed.
The initial pictures were primarily to give engineers information on the condition of the lander, including its power supply and the health of its science instruments.
An image showed the lander unfurled its solar panels as planned after the dust settled
The Phoenix lander with fully deployed solar panels in a clean room at Lockheed Martin in Denver
Initial results show Phoenix landed almost level, tilted at a quarter of a degree.
"The hardest part is over. There's still a lot of drama left," said Goldstein, who kept up a JPL tradition by passing out bowls of lucky peanuts during the landing.
Phoenix plunged into the Martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph after a 10-month, 422 million-mile voyage through space.
In space: One of the Phoenix Mars Lander's legs lands on the moon
The lander kept in contact with Earth through the orbiting Mars Odyssey during the entire "seven minutes of terror."
It performed a choreographed dance that included unfurling its parachute, shedding its heat shield and backshell, and firing thrusters to slow to a 5 mph touchdown.
It's the first successful soft landing on Mars since the twin Viking landers touched down in 1976. NASA's twin rovers, which successfully landed on Mars four years ago, used a combination of parachutes and cushioned air bags to bounce to the surface.
Mission chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, had two words to describe the landing: "Picture perfect."
Explorer: An artist's concept depicting NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander using its Meteorological Staion and its Robotic Arm at the same time
Phoenix's landing is a relief for NASA since Mars has a reputation of swallowing spacecraft.
More than half of all nations' attempts to land on Mars have failed.
The only other time NASA searched for chemical signs of life was during the Viking missions. Neither lander found conclusive evidence of life.
Phoenix avoided the doom of its sister spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander, which in 1999 crashed into the south pole after prematurely cutting off its engines.
The Polar Lander loss, along with the earlier loss of an orbiter the same year, forced NASA to overhaul its Mars exploration program.
Phoenix, named after the mythical bird that is reborn from its ashes, inherited hardware from a lander mission that was scrapped after the back-to-back Mars losses, and carries similar instruments that flew on Polar Lander.
It cost $420 million to develop and launch Phoenix compared to the $820 million originally invested in the twin rovers.
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A NASA spacecraft has landed on Mars and beamed back the first pictures of an unexplored region of the red planet.
The Phoenix Mars Lander has plunged into the atmosphere of the northern polar region to start 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.
Less than two hours after landing it beamed back 48 black-and-white images.
Historic: One of the first colour images from the Phoenix Mars Lander shows an unexplored region of the Red Planet
Red planet: The image shows the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars
The pictures included the horizon of the
arctic plain and ground with polygon patterns similar to what can be found in Earth's permafrost regions.
Cheers swept through mission control when the touchdown signal was finally raised after a nail-biting descent. Engineers and scientists hugged and high-fived one another.
"In my dreams it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it went," project manager Barry Goldstein said.
Phoenix's target landing site was 30-mile-wide shallow valley in the high northern latitudes similar in location to Earth's Greenland or northern Alaska.
The site was chosen because images from space spied evidence of a reservoir of frozen water close to the surface.
Phoenix is equipped with an 8-foot-long arm capable of digging trenches in the soil to get to ice that is believed to be buried up to a foot deep.
Then it will analyse the dirt and ice samples for traces of organic compounds, the chemical building blocks of life.
The lander also will study whether the ice ever melted at some point in Mars' history when the planet had a warmer environment than the current harsh, cold one it currently has.
Scientists do not expect to find water in its liquid form at the Phoenix landing site because it's too frigid. But they say that if raw ingredients of life exist anywhere on the planet, they likely would be preserved in the ice.
Touchdown: Control room members Ed Sedivy, left, and Peter Smith celebrate as they get word that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander arrives on the Red Planet safely
Phoenix, however, cannot detect signs of alien life that may exist now or once existed.
The initial pictures were primarily to give engineers information on the condition of the lander, including its power supply and the health of its science instruments.
An image showed the lander unfurled its solar panels as planned after the dust settled
The Phoenix lander with fully deployed solar panels in a clean room at Lockheed Martin in Denver
Initial results show Phoenix landed almost level, tilted at a quarter of a degree.
"The hardest part is over. There's still a lot of drama left," said Goldstein, who kept up a JPL tradition by passing out bowls of lucky peanuts during the landing.
Phoenix plunged into the Martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph after a 10-month, 422 million-mile voyage through space.
In space: One of the Phoenix Mars Lander's legs lands on the moon
The lander kept in contact with Earth through the orbiting Mars Odyssey during the entire "seven minutes of terror."
It performed a choreographed dance that included unfurling its parachute, shedding its heat shield and backshell, and firing thrusters to slow to a 5 mph touchdown.
It's the first successful soft landing on Mars since the twin Viking landers touched down in 1976. NASA's twin rovers, which successfully landed on Mars four years ago, used a combination of parachutes and cushioned air bags to bounce to the surface.
Mission chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, had two words to describe the landing: "Picture perfect."
Explorer: An artist's concept depicting NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander using its Meteorological Staion and its Robotic Arm at the same time
Phoenix's landing is a relief for NASA since Mars has a reputation of swallowing spacecraft.
More than half of all nations' attempts to land on Mars have failed.
The only other time NASA searched for chemical signs of life was during the Viking missions. Neither lander found conclusive evidence of life.
Phoenix avoided the doom of its sister spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander, which in 1999 crashed into the south pole after prematurely cutting off its engines.
The Polar Lander loss, along with the earlier loss of an orbiter the same year, forced NASA to overhaul its Mars exploration program.
Phoenix, named after the mythical bird that is reborn from its ashes, inherited hardware from a lander mission that was scrapped after the back-to-back Mars losses, and carries similar instruments that flew on Polar Lander.
It cost $420 million to develop and launch Phoenix compared to the $820 million originally invested in the twin rovers.
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