After 5 years of preparation, NASA has just successfully landed the Phoenix Mars Lander on Mars. It's taken the better part of a year to get there, but it just touched down a couple of minutes ago. Pretty amazing really, how it traveled there for months, entered the atmosphere, got rid of its heat shield, deployed a parachute, released the parachute, and then fired thrusters to land itself perfectly on the surface, right where it was supposed to land, all by itself. It will now join Spirit and Opportunity, the two rovers which are still crawling around Mars, years after they were supposed to have stopped working. Phoenix, however, is not mobile. It will sit where it is and slowly dig for ice and conditions which could support life. Now, NASA just has to wait about two weeks, while the lander powers itself up and gets itself ready to begin work.
If we can continually put these landers and rovers on the planet, it shouldn't be too far from now when we can go there ourselves!
3 comments:
Nice, now that we can start polluting and disintegrating another planet.
Well that's quite a pessimistic view of the events, but ok...
Hey i admire what these guys are doing, new frontiers and what not. But im just being realistic here. what happens to all those mars rovers, and explorers when they shut down? they become the first piles of Martian junk.
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