Mars Phoenix Mission

[Bateluer]

Exciting

If anyone is in the Tuscon area, there will be some events going on at the UA Science Center

? Children's activities
? Live Feed from NASA/JPL
? Commentary by UA scientists and engineers
? MarsQuest planetarium show
? Tours of the Space Imagery Center
? Mars & Solar viewing
? Physics Factory
? Free parking in the Cherry Avenue Garage Link to Map
? Cake and balloons

Misson Details

FAQ

What should happen when the lander entes Martian atmosphere

 

[Bateluer]

Bump

 

[Saint Nick]

This is pretty exciting! Space has always fascinated me

Hopefully it doesn't have the same fate as that one lander that crashed because they forgot to convert standard measurement to SI measurement

 

[0roo0roo]

and obama wants to slash nasa budget
#@!%

 

[Toastedlightly]

Day of the Jedi....

 

[BW86]

sweet...

 

[Bateluer]

Bump, only 2 days remaining now.

 

[Modelworks]

I've been watching this one closely.

If you get the science channel they are going to show the whole thing live.
http://science.discovery.com/t...mars/phoenix-mars.html


Also a real time display of where it is, as well as anything else you want to look up.
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

 

[DrPizza]

How could they show it live? There's a few minutes time delay for the signal from Mars to even reach the earth. (Does it amaze anyone else that such a small object can transmit a signal that we can listen to from millions of miles away?)

 

[sutahz]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
How could they show it live? There's a few minutes time delay for the signal from Mars to even reach the earth. (Does it amaze anyone else that such a small object can transmit a signal that we can listen to from millions of miles away?)

TV isn't instantaneous, at least a few sec's delay. Take it to the extreme, in person things aren't live because of the millisecond delay between your optical nerves recieving the stimulus relaying it to the brain, the brain decoding what it can and making you aware of it.

It is as live as it can be. If we could build a super great telescope and find life on another planet and watch them hunt, gather, work, race cars, blow things up that wouldn't be live either, as the light/images we'd be seeing is millions of years in the past.

 

[sandorski]

UFO cited over City X, panic in the Streets!

Mars Today

"The reports began this early this morning", said Gickt a 119 Operator for City X Emergency Services. "It was nuts! All our lines lit up at once and we were busy for over an hour."

A Martian Defense Force spokesperson stated in an official news scrum, "We plead with the citizens of City X to remain calm. This is being fully investigated, but preliminary reports suggest this was merely a missing Weather Balloon lost 4 days ago near City XIII."

A local farmer, Zhhhyt Pkept claims the UFO landed on his property, but he has yet to locate it. "You wouldn't listen to meh! The little pink men have come and will take over ar minds. The END IS NOW!!!!!! inaudible"

When this reporter replayed that audio back to the Chchz Ygeyf Mayor of City X, he responded, "<laughter> Come on! UFO's? Little pink men? I suppose they came from the Blue Planet? <laughter> Everyone just needs to calm down. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation here. Let the investigators do their work."

Pjif Lkeapr reporting, be sure to read the upcoming Investigatve Report: Where do your Tax $ Go?

 

[dennilfloss]

Crossing fingers.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
How could they show it live? There's a few minutes time delay for the signal from Mars to even reach the earth. (Does it amaze anyone else that such a small object can transmit a signal that we can listen to from millions of miles away?)

Even more amazing is how sensitive the REALLY good radio antennas are.

If you add up all the power that arecibo, the VLA, and all of those other radio dishes have absorbed over the entire history of radio astronomy, that power is less than the power you put out clicking on this thread.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
How could they show it live? There's a few minutes time delay for the signal from Mars to even reach the earth. (Does it amaze anyone else that such a small object can transmit a signal that we can listen to from millions of miles away?)

Its about 15 minutes to send/receive a signal from mars on Sunday.
Shortest amount of time to send/receive can be 4 minutes , longest 21 minutes.
So mars at least isn't at its furthest right now.


They actually use several arrays to receive the signal from spacecraft that are far out.
What really amazes me every time I think about it is voyager 1 and 2.
Damn they knew how to build things then.

some voyager facts:
launched 1977.
9.82 billion miles from the Sun
Powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, should last till 2020.
Power consumption at max 430 watts
Radio signals take over 14.6 hours to reach the Earth from Voyager 1
Receiving the signal requires a 230 foot dish antenna
Transmitting the signal to voyager1 requires an output of over 325 Kwatts
Voyager 1 has a maximum transmit power of 20 watts
The signal received here on earth is 1 billionth of a watt.
There are six computers, totaling 541KB of memory

 

[Bateluer]

Bump

1 Day left now

 

[Jeff7]

And who would have ever thought that the Mars Exploration Rovers would be around at the same time? Hopefully Phoenix has as good a run as they continue to have.

 

[Bateluer]

Bump, only 9 hours remaining. Watch the news tonight

 

[XZeroII]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
And who would have ever thought that the Mars Exploration Rovers would be around at the same time? Hopefully Phoenix has as good a run as they continue to have.

What would be really cool, although extremely impractical, would be to land this one near one of those rovers so that the rover could watch the new one land.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: Jeff7
And who would have ever thought that the Mars Exploration Rovers would be around at the same time? Hopefully Phoenix has as good a run as they continue to have.

What would be really cool, although extremely impractical, would be to land this one near one of those rovers so that the rover could watch the new one land.

Would be interesting to watch but would not allow them to do purpose for this mission.
They are landing this on a spot that has lots of ice so they can collect samples in the search for life on mars.

 

[Jeff7]

Less than 2h30m until landing.


I hope everyone's geared up their servers to handle the load of providing live online coverage of this.

 

[shortylickens]

You guys wont forgive me but:
I dont give a damn about any of this.

When are we putting people on Mars?

 

[Baked]

Never. We're just wasting money.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
and obama wants to slash nasa budget
#@!%

As he should. The USA should fix problems in the country before they concentrate on dominating space.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
You guys wont forgive me but:
I dont give a damn about any of this.

When are we putting people on Mars?

Don't make me dig up one of my essay thingies on the benefits of pure science.

Edit: Here, links are easier. Both should take you right to the posts I made:
Text

Text

Be warned, both are older threads.



If you think pure science is useless, please destroy everything you own which employs electronics in any way. At one point in time, studying particle physics, namely electrons, would have garnered similar responses. You know, who the hell gives a damn about tiny particles that have a mass of something like 2*10^-36 grams, or thereabouts. Who cares about electrons? Those scientists were "just wasting money" learning about these things.

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
and obama wants to slash nasa budget
#@!%

As he should. The USA should fix problems in the country before they concentrate on dominating space.

NASA is less than 1% of our total budget. If NASA were to vanish one day, you wouldn't see a damn bit of change in your taxes. If anything, you'd see a slowdown in scientific progress in our society. NASA isn't just about space exploration, it's also a technology breeder, where the best and brightest can go to do things humanity's never thought of before.

An excerpt from one of the posts above:
"$16 billion a year is NASA's current yearly budget. We spend over 5.5x more than that on tobacco products. 2006, consumer spending on DVDs was $24 billion dollars. That is where our priorities lie. I'd say that NASA does a hell of a lot more good for us than tobacco could ever do, not that that's saying a whole lot."

 

[Modelworks]

If it wasn't for NASA and the space program you would not have those shows to watch on your HDTV, no GPS in the car, and weather forecasting would be about as advanced as walking outside and looking up.