Ao vivo:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/Landing Day05.25.08 12:00 pm
Welcome back to the Phoenix landing blog, being written from JPL in Pasadena, CA, where today engineers are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Phoenix spacecraft at Mars. Less than seven hours from now, Phoenix will enter the Martian atmosphere, heading towards its landing site in the northern arctic plains of Mars. It was decided yesterday afternoon that no trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) would be needed last night, but left open the option for another TCM eight hours before landing. Likewise, it was again decided this morning that the spacecraft trajectory is close enough that no correction is needed today either. Sleeping bags and cots scattered throughout offices and cubicles hint at the long night team members have had making final preparations for EDL this afternoon. The final EDL parameters were uploaded to the spacecraft this morning, drawing to a close the task of preparing the spacecraft for landing. Everything from this point out will happen autonomously.
In addition, the final EDL timeline was issued just this morning. The table below shows the time at which important events will be taking place in the course of EDL.
Event Time (UTC) Time (PST)
Cruise Stage Separation 23:39:17 16:39:17
Turn-to-Entry 23:39:47 16:39:47
Entry 23:46:17 16:46:17
Nominal Plasma Black out start 23:47:05 16:47:05
Nominal Plasma Black out end 23:49:05 16:49:05
Nominal Heatshield Deployment 23:50:12 16:50:12
Nominal Lander Leg Deployment 23:50:22 16:50:22
Nominal Lander Separation 23:52:50 16:52:50
Nominal Touch Down 23:53:33 16:53:33
A number of questions have come up in response to the blog regarding the search for life on Mars. To be sure, Phoenix isn’t looking for life itself. Instead, Phoenix will evaluate whether life could survive here, or the habitability of Mars, by looking at the building blocks of life: water and any organics which maybe located in the soil. Depending on what Phoenix finds, future missions will follow Phoenix in response to these discoveries; much as Phoenix followed the Mars Odyssey in response to its discovery of subsurface water ice in the Northern plains.
In addition, we’ve taken numerous precautions to avoid bringing organic material with us to Mars. The spacecraft is assembled in a clean room and kept under such stringent cleanliness requirements all the way through launch. In addition, the Phoenix robotic arm is kept within what we call the “biobarrier.” This is a protective bag that encases the robotic arm, which is the tool that will actually do the digging on Mars and comes in direct contact with any samples we analyze. After being sterilized in an autoclave, the robotic arm was placed within the biobarrier, which will only be opened once we’re safely on the surface. The Phoenix science team has gone to great lengths to ensure that all the science we do on the surface of Mars will be valid.
As you can imagine the excitement is building in anticipation of a big day here at JPL. News vans are filling the parking lot, and special guests will be arriving before long to view the landing. As you can imagine, the Phoenix team is excited but nervous, and everyone is finding their own way to burn that energy in the last few hours of waiting that’s left before we take our seats in Mission Control around 2:00 pm (PST).
Check back to this page often, as updates will be posted here throughout the day.
Brent Shockley
Phoenix Configuration and Information Management Engineer
