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Maine to Mars Blog Index
January 25, 2008
Greetings from ORT 8

Well, it's 1 a.m. (3 a.m. Maine time), and ORT 8 is off and running.

Thursday was a training day, so the science day is pretty light. This test starts off on Sol 20, meaning the 20th "day" on Mars. A Mars day is 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, so that really throws off the scheduling: every Earth day, we receive the data 40 minutes later. All the scientists and engineers (well, most of them) are at home asleep. Nothing happens on Earth while Phoenix is performing the day's science activities, i.e. imaging, digging, weather measurement and so forth.

As I said, today's science is pretty light, weather measurement of pressure and temperature, Lidar atmospheric measurements and standard SSI imaging of the environment. We'll take optical depth images of the Sun's intensity, which is needed to determine power status (we're a solar powered mission).

I'm sure things will get more exciting later in this seven day test.

Posted at 03:10 AM

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A native Mainer writes about his experiences as an engineer for the Phoenix Mars Mission, an effort to see if a robotic lander can find evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Robert Bovill was born at Maine Medical Center July 5, 1979. He graduated from Thornton Academy in 1998. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Maine in Orono, and then went to the University of Arizona for graduate school. He was employed full-time as a test engineer for this Phoenix Mars Mission a year and a half ago by the University of Arizona.



See a rendering of the Phoenix Mars lander during the final seconds of descent.

See the instruments on the Phoenix Mars lander.

Abbreviation Glossary
Testing  
FVT   Functional Verification Test
GDS   Ground Data System
OPUS Odyssey/Phoenix UHF System
ORT Operational Readiness Test/Training
PIT    Payload Inter-operability Testbed
PTL Payload Testbed Lab
PVV Payload Verification and Validation
   
Places  
JPL  Jet Propulsion Laboratory
LM  Lockheed-Martin
UA/LPL University of Arizona/Lunar and Planetary Lab
   
Events
EDL  Entry, Descent and Landing
   
Instruments
EM  Enginerring Model
FM Flight Model
ISAD Icy Sample Acquisition Device
MECA Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer
OM Optical Microscope
RA Robotic Arm
RAC Robotic Arm Camera
RASP Rapid Active Sampling Package
SSI    Surface Stereoscopic Imager
TECP   Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe
TEGA  Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer
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