http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=8 has the pictures as they're coming in. Just landed a few hours ago so there's not much yet, but hopefully we'll see some nice high-res colour photos pretty soon.

Also, if you thought this thread was about a sports team when you read the title, kindly remove yourself from the breeding population.

What if I had the cheerful wish that it was about me?

Also, Why have I not heard about this until just now?

because nobody cares about things that take more than a week to do?


also: launched in august? i thought Mars was a 3 year trip?

I think with the relatively small mass and no need for anything besides prepulsion, they could speed up the trip considerably.

Mars is generally about 6 months for a high-energy conjunction launch and 9 months for a standard opposition launch, IIRC, I may have these two mixed up though. The lowest-energy Hohmann transfer orbits take considerably longer (like, a couple of years or so maybe?) but use much less fuel, whereas there's not really any way with chemical rockets to get it down under 6 months. The ion engines that we have now could cut down the trip by a bit for small payloads. Nuclear pulse or fusion rockets could do it in something absurdly short like a week. Matter/antimatter annihilation propulsion: 3 days (and this is pretty much the best that can be done with known physics). Alcubierre drive: a couple of minutes. "Space-folding" drive: instantly, but now we're just getting silly.

But yeah, beyond Mars the trips do get pretty long. Jupiter is a couple of years; the last probe we sent to Saturn was launched in '97 and got there in '04; the New Horizons probe to Pluto was launched a couple years ago and is supposed to get there in 2015 I think. The Messenger Mercury probe is gonna take some 7 years to get there too; it's closer than Saturn but orbital dynamics means you need a ton of delta V to slow down enough to get that close to the sun, so it takes longer. Also, some of these probes aren't launched on the fastest trajectories such that they can swing by other planets and observe them for a short time as well as sling-shotting to save fuel (when Cassini swung around Jupiter, it's presence along with Galileo was the first time we've had two spacecraft observing Jupiter up close at the same time, which was kind of neat). For Mars probes, there's not really anything between here and there to stop at, so the routes are a lot more direct.

I'm going to stop myself before I start ranting about the JIMO probe being cancelled

I just got off work and was pretty stoked to hear its landing was successful. It'll be pretty interesting to see the polar ice form.

(Kyle, NH cut the trip to Jupiter down to just over a year. (Hell, it cut the trip to the moon to just hours.))

Wow, I hadn't realized that. That's crazy velocity; musta taken like a bloody Energia with a tiny little probe on the top, haha.

EDIT: [From Wikipedia] "It had an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.21 km/s (36,260 mph) after its last engine shut down, making it the fastest spacecraft launched to date." Dear christ, more than 16 km/s of delta V without a slingshot. That's quite impressive.

I was hoping for at least some hills.

/me watches for transformer exoskeleton

The only thing interesting about this is the probe itself. By now though, the novelty of having something on Mars has worn off. It's a boring, red dessert, just like last time. We have less boring desserts here on earth, but it doesn't cost billions to take pictures of them. Wake me up if they find microbes. But even then they'd better be pretty freaking awesome microbes, because I have plenty sitting right here on my desk.

Right, we should instead spend more money to blow planets up. Particularly, this one.

Holy ****! They're going to find out there are more rocks on mars! AWESOME.

They aren't looking for sperm.

Those are under his desk, not on his desk.

GAWD.

Considering the majority of mars missions have failed up to this point, my props off to JPL.
I mean, what if American Airlines only made 50% of it's flights, would you call flying routine still?

Sam Neill says it's best not to screw with space folding.

Also PS Obi you said 'dessert' instead of 'desert'.

I don't know I quite like Marsberry Pie.

<3

the marsberrys taste like marsberrys

(@ Obi) You know what else is a boring desert? That's right, Iraq. And your war there has so far cost *calculates* about 1,600 times as much as this mission to Mars. So hey, I'm sure you have valid arguments why the war is more important than this, but I'm just sayin'. Yeah I'm false dichotomizing like crazy but it's not like the morons who oppose space travel didn't start it with their OMG IF YOU FUND NASA THEN IT STEALS ALL THE MONEY AWAY FROM CANCERZ RESEARCHES AND TEH EDUMACATIONAL SYSTEM.

Also, you know who else didn't fund space exploration? That's right: Hitler.

Man I never knew logical fallacies could be so much FUN.

I need more mars rocks for my things that remind me of paprika collection.

So you wouldn't find it even slightly interesting that life arose on two adjacent planets in a single solar system?

No, because that would complicate things.

Unlike strawberry sorbet, which is an EXCITING red dessert.

Yeah, some people are more concerned with... I don't know what... than what would pretty much be the most important scientific discovery ever. Granted, the chances of Phoenix discovering life on Mars are incredibly slim, but you never know until you look.

There are three possibilities really:

1. There is not, and never has been, life on Mars in any form. If we searched and searched for centuries and never found anything then we'd be forced to conclude this, and then re-evaluate how common life might be in the universe at large. Could be it's a lonely cold galaxy out there, so we might as well start filling it up with our own life.

2. There is life on Mars, and it arose independently from life on Earth. Well hell, if this were the case, then there must be life pretty much EVERYWHERE in the universe! Because what are the chances that it would come into existence on two adjacent planets otherwise? We'd better get to contacting us some aliens.

3. There is life on Mars, and it is similar enough to Earth life that there is a common origin. Imagine all the research it would spark to try to find whether life started on Earth, or on Mars, or somewhere else entirely. Very exciting as well.

Of course this is assuming that there's nothing even more extraordinary such as multi-cellular or even intelligent life that exists or once existed on Mars. The chances are pretty slim (as far as we know), but it's neat to think about.

My bet: we will eventually find fossilized microbes that appear to share a common origin with earth's, most likely exchanged via meteorites and such. In any case I hope I'll still be alive the day such a discovery is made.

My bet: Who cares globalthermalnuclear war is going to kill us all anyways

so till that happens let's all sit around and get high, right? and post on forums and such

didn't Hitler do some rocket work and such?

i think this means he'd have been pro-space race

The V-2 was designed only as a weapon. If the V-2 had military success, perhaps some form of space project could have been launched. But the V-2 got used late in the war. It was ridiculously expensive and highly ineffective.

What?

Also, the Third Reich laid the ground work for both ours and the Russian's space program, and many of their scientists were integral to their success. Hitler had highly elaborate long term plans for a space program.



Making an assumptions about the prevalence of life in the rest of the universe based on our finding on one other planet would be *retarded*. Lack of life on Mars tells us nothing, except that there is probably not life on every single plant that's even remotely close to supporting it.



This would be interesting, but not that interesting. There could be a myriad of advanced civilizations throughout the galaxy, but it's not would to do us any good. Unless you can figure out how to harness the Sun to power a giant transmitter and like waiting hundreds of years, you won't be contacting anything. I guess you could always wait for some unforeseen breakthrough in physics and science, or hope that aliens finally realize the crop circles are a poor means of communication, but finding microbes on Mars takes us no closer to that.

Finding microbes on Mars would be interesting, but it wouldn't get us anywhere. That's pretty much as far as it goes. Cool. So about as interesting as the original mission, maybe more, considering the pictures from the original are pretty boring once you get over the fact that it's another planet.



Uh huh.

lolll he thinks I make this stuff up, how cute.

thats what they said about the holocaust and look how that turned out

too bad its not in color still pretty cool

They have other missions in color. I'm sure this one will eventually start sending color pics.

kyle90 knows what he is talking about for one.. and for those of you who feel that Mars is just one big desert, or 'dessert' if you will, don't you think that NASA has some reason for landing a multi million dollar landing craft in a area as flat as possible?

Nah. I mean come on..if I had a 50% overall failure rate riding on my reputation I would definitely land this sucker right in the middle of some mountains or in the deepest crater possible, unlike NASA who clearly just can't handle that. Really now, who is ever scientific about space exploration these days? Crashing probes into another planet is way more fun.

he also had the holy grail AND the arc of the covenant! those sneaky little Nazis!



say what now?



like the ones that people would say could never happen... like a vehicle breaking the sound barrier...or i dont know man going to the moon?



obviously you have not read 'the Andromeda Strain'

...also how many probes/rovers are on mars? because if there are a few of them there im thinkin... ROBOT WARS!!! (MARS EDITION!)

I think the best part about the Phoenix Lander, was following its updates on Twitter

Yeah, but in this case "people" happens to be the scientific community because of things like relativity. I'm not saying it's impossible, but very unlikely. This isn't a case of simple engineering. We don't even know if these things are physically possible, let alone a way of actually achieving them. If they were to happen they would require a massive paradigm shift in our understanding of physics. It's not something simple engineering development will overcome.

I don't think you understand how large of a thinking shift had to be made to get objects breaking the sound barrier, or objects floating in outer space.