Thanks to everyone who showed up - I’ve given lectures to smaller audiences in the past. I will re-record it to archive on Ustream tomorrow!
If you want to grab a small Quicktime Movie of the same slides - then download a 19 meg Quicktime Movie HERE - you will have to click through the transitions etc, quite a few clicks, but you should have the movies and slides in better detail than the uStream cast.
I have given lectures to Astronomy Societies around the UK for a few years, and the most well received has been one called ‘Cosmic Casualty’. The slides for this were put together the evening before I first gave it at the BAA’s Christmas meeting in 2006 - sat at the same table we all sat at to broadcast Mars Live during the Phoenix Landing. I thought it would be interesting to put Phoenix into context with respect to the missions that have flown before, which is what the second half of ‘Cosmic Casualty’ is about.
So - tune in to our Ustream channel ( I will add a link before hand ) tomorrow, straight after the 2202 BST Shuttle Launch - at about 2230 BST, that’s 1730 Eastern, 1330 Pacific. (Pushed to 2230BST so people in Europe can have a chance to observe the Shuttle and ET overflight after an on time launch)
Clearly inspired by yesterdays Marslive update 
- Ray Arvidson opened the last daily Phoenix Press Conference till Tuesday, with a stretch of the distant horizon. Before moving on to more results, a problem with TEGA was mentioned, the thermal instrument that will detect the composition of the soil and ice. It has to ion beams that ionize the gas that comes off the heated samples, and one of the two appears to be shorted out. They’re taking a few days to look at it, and as a result the first instrument to actually receive samples from the arm will be the MECA optical microscope, not TEGA as previously planned. But they moved on to two interesting results. The robotic arm is now fully deployed and its camera was commanded to image one of the few bits of the local terrain Phoenix had not yet seen…under itself!
There is a large smooth feature under the lander that the science team will re-image tomorrow - it could be a large rock exposed by the force of the thrusters during landing, or perhaps even a piece of ice - we don’t know yet. Further imaging will hopefully answer that question. A good clear point is that the footpad obseved is firmly on solid ground - this pad was not visible by the camera after landing.
Meanwhile, the LIDAR instrument from Canada has fired up. This animation is an image of the outgoing laser beam - you can just see it coming on and off.
The results are fascinating - by measuring the reflection of the LIDAR off clouds and dust at regular intervals over a period of time, they can observe the motion of the dust and cloud overhead - in this first observation a clear dust feature moved towards the lander.
Good luck to the Space Shuttle Discovery and her crew launching tomorrow to deliver the Japanese module Kibo to the International Space Station. Coverage of the launch means there will not be another 7pm BST Phoenix press conference, but if there’s news to report, I’ll report it!
As promised, they finished the low res black and white panorama today. No real surprises ( the HiRISE images predicted that of course). Higher resolution, lower compression, and more filters will follow over the next few weeks. Once armed with that panorama, it was time to get creative. Trying a technique I first saw used by Phil Stooke - I’ve stretched the horizon section significantly, and it reveals distance topography to the south.
The colour in that is just a colourisation, not actual colour data - I added it purely for aesthetic value. Have fund trying to cross reference it to maps of the area posted previously. The arm has completed its initial deployment and pulled free of it’s two restraints that kept it securely bolted to the lander deck during launch, cruise and landing. Tomorrow will see it deploy further still, before, in the coming sols, surveying one of the footpads that couldn’t be seen from Phoenix’s camera, and the terrain under the lander. Thereafter it can start investigating its workspace which has now been given a few more feature names. They’re all based on children’s stories - Humpty Dumpty, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland - and many more will follow I’m sure.
Real life has intruded somewhat in the last couple of days, mostly in the form of teaching, but we should have the landing video clip up later today. In the meantime, Emily reports the excellent news that the arm is unstowed and working fine; a working arm is the last of the major hurdles Phoenix needed to clear to complete its mission.
Landing was on Sol 0, Sol 1 produced that extra piece of panorama to the south and observations verifying the readiness of the robotic arm to deploy. Sol 2 was planned to include further imaging and the initial deployment of the robot arm as part of a two step process. On the morning of Sol 2 however, the UHF transmitter on board Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suffered a fault which meant that instructions couldn’t be relayed down to Phoenix. As a result, Phoenix resorted to a backup set of instructions for the day that included a stunning 2 frame wide and 4 frame tall colour mosaic looking out towards the North West.
It is important to note that this was an MRO problem, not a Phoenix problem, and the lander is in perfect health. Whilst they finish troubleshooting MRO’s UHF radio ( which appears to be working again ) they have resorted to Mars Odyssey to conduct the uplink of new commands and the relay of the results. Sol 3 should include the delayed sequences of Sol 2, which will see the robotic arm deployed to a half-way point, and much of the remaining terrain imaged in low resolution black and white.
Meanwhile, the potential work-volume of the robotic arm imaged by the SSI in stereo on Sol 1 has been turned into an early elevation map from which the science team are laying out areas that they consider ‘reserved’ for long term observations, some areas reserved for use by the temperature and conductivity probe on the arm, and some areas that will be useful for dumping dug material whilst trenching. Hard working science teams often resort to some unusual names for features on the ground…this time is no different. Humpty Dumpty, Headless, All the kings men, and Sleepy Hollow are all early names for features imaged so far, and more are sure to follow.
NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona
What a mess we’ve made of the pristine northern polar plain of Mars! This stunning image from HiRISE taken just 22 hours after landing shows the three main components of the landing system. The heatshield that survived a hypersonic entry at 1000 degC, the parachute that pulled the vehicle from 1000 mph to just 150 mph and of course, Phoenix itself - with two round solar arrays deployed on the surface.
Closer inspection shows that the heatshield bounced, much like Opportunities heatshield did more than four years ago, leaving a small round crater exposing dark soil beneath. The Backshell, falling slowly under the the parachute without Phoenix inside, has impacted and the chute then dropped to the south - partially visible the white and orange fabric from which it was made, and the lines connecting it to the backshell. And then, at the top - Phoenix itself, with a dark area around where the thrusters have kicked up a little of the dust. The only other part of the Phoenix spacecraft left is the cruise stage. A brittle construction of solar panels, carbon fibre, cables, star trackers and a radio transmitter - this will have burnt up in the martian atmosphere a few seconds after Phoenix began its descent.
We know there to be ice below the soil - but perhaps these three sites show that what we will see is a light dust layer on the surface, a darker soil layer below, and then the ice a little deeper still.
The other astonishing HiRISE image of the Parachute with Phoenix suspended below has been released with a little more context. Astonishingly, the full image includes the distance Heimdall crater beyond. Phoenix was some 20km close than the crater, and about 10km above the ground so the actual landing site is below this image.
NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona
Meanwhile, on the surface of Mars, Phoenix has sent its first weather report - Temperatures ranged from a low of -80degC in the morning, to a scorching -30degC in the mid afternoon. Average atmospheric pressure was 8.55 millibars and there was a NE breeze of 20kph. Sol 1 (the first full day after landing) including adding a fair few extra images to those assembled previously. Sol 2 had been planned as including some arm deployment activities and further imaging, however a problem with the UHF radio on MRO that was due to send the commands to Phoenix has delayed those plans and so Phoenix will conduct a stand-by runout list of operations instead.
NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona
With the time at 1156 am on Sol 2 at Phoenix’s landing site, the sun will currently about 40 degrees above the tell-tale windsock of the met boom to the right of centre of this image. More lander news when it happens!
The Mars Live team are catching up on sleep (and video editing!), but news from Mars continues to flow thick and fast. I think that we got most of it right in our discussion of the first images which you can watch below or on youtube
but since then we’ve had the look-again-and-again-and-still-don’t-quite-believe-it descent image, captured by MRO as Phoenix swung beneath its parachute
And then this morning we’ve had the results of the latest uplink from the happily working lander. I can’t decide which to post, so take your pick here. Like any good tourist, Phoenix seems to have spent a lot of time taking pictures of itself, but there’s a good shot of what must be the backshell in the distance, and our first glimpses of areas that the science team might actually get to dig in. At first glance (and this is before I’ve had any coffee), the polygonal structure extends to where the lander is sitting, although it seems less pronounced.
More news after today’s press conference at 4pm BST.
It all worked beautifully, and by the end of the evening, not only had we got the hang of uStreaming, we had a colour postcard from inside the Martian Arctic Circle. I will attempt no analysis but this - it’s perfect. It’s everything we hoped, expected, and dreamed it would be.
To put the other images that came down into context, I’ve layered them over a pre-launch test image of the lander and it’s deck.
Those four patches gave us all the clues we need to know we had a safe, power positive and fully deployed lander on the surface. Chris and Will are going to be slicing up some of the nights coverage for Youtube later today, and we’ll post updates over the next few weeks to keep you updated. Thanks to everyone who tuned in, we hope you enjoyed our efforts!
