Landing
May 27, 2008
Landing!
This shows a color image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. It shows the Phoenix lander with its solar panels deployed on the Mars surface.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. -Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
People kept asking me if I was nervous or anxious. It finally hit me at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, 2 hours prior to landing. By the time I got to the Science Operations Center for the BBQ and landing festivities, a few hundred people were already there. I had several family members and friends there myself. It was crazy in there, with reporters mission personnel, and friends and family. Finally, the first signals started coming in shortly after 4:30.
Atmosphere entry: Cheers!
Parachute deploy: Cheers!
Radar ground lock: Cheers!!
Free fall and thruster start: Big Cheers!
250meters, 150meters, 100meters, 80meters, 70, 60, 50, 40 meters, 27 meters.
Everyone is on pins and needles. 10 meters.
And then it comes, "Touchdown confirmation!" and the room pauses.
Everyone is waiting, "is it ok to cheer now?". And then the room erupts.
Cheers and tears, smiles and hugs. We are on Mars!! A 422-million mile, 10-month journey through the vacuum of space, years of assembly and testing and we made it. And the navigation team made it look easy. But to put the difficulty into perspective, the journey required an accuracy of 1 part in 10 million, said one NASA official.
And now the work begins.
T-minus 3 days
T-minus 3 days. That's all the time that is left until we land.
Management put a stop to all testing this week, so we were been busy running simulations and tests on the hardware all last week.
Continue reading "T-minus 3 days"
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