Yesterday, I wrote about the second coolest thing about Sunday's Mars landing. There's more good stuff today, which we'll dub the third coolest. Like yesterday, this comes to us mainly courtesy of the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) probe onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
As it turns out, yesterday's amazing photo of the Phoenix lander parachuting its way through the Martian atmosphere was a tiny crop of a much larger photo. Above is a wider, higher-resolution version. It's worth clicking on.
It looks like the lander is heading for a huge crater (which didn't have a name yesterday, but is now referred to as "Heimdall"), but it's an optical illusion. The lander was 20 kilometers or so in front of the crater and actually landed on a flat plain. That's good news, because a crater landing would have sent the lander tumbling toward the bottom!
We know more today about the incredibly difficult conditions this shot was taken under. The parachute above the Phoenix lander had just opened at around 13 km above the planet's surface. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was 310 km above the Martian surface and 760 km from the Phoenix lander, traveling 3.4k kilometers/second. (around 7,600 mph).
Pretty cool, but that's not the third coolest thing. The third coolest thing is a more recent photo from the MRO, looking down at the Martian surface and seeing the Phoenix lander on the ground.
In this photo, the barren Martian landscape is interrupted by three landing sites. At the bottom of the photo sits the parachute and its backshell. Members of the HiRISE team say you can see the stripes on the parachute. I can't see them. Too much Red Bull in the lab, guys?
The center object is probably a depression in the ground made by the heat shield which, without benefit of parachute, had a 13 km free fall.
The top object is the lander itself, with the two solar arrays easily visible. It's nice to see all the pieces, but without this one, the other two don't count.
I am by no means a NASA fanboy. There's a lot they do I consider light on science and high on danger (take the shuttle or International Space Station, please). But this Martian mission is so amazingly beautiful in its layers of interlocking intricate successes, that it's impossible not to be in awe.
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May 28, 2008 6:43 PM
Geoff, you and I (and my old physics professor, Dr. Robert Park) could have long conversations on exactly how useful the ISS really is, even if it is inspiring from a human standpoint. Did you hear that the toilet onboard is broken? Ewww...
But yeah - I'm with you on that; killing the Hubble, pushing back the Webb, but announcing huge plans for a manned return to the moon and mars? Hmm. Sketchy, but definitely inspirational! Dr. Park would say "Send robots, they're safer and way more efficient. And they don't have to eat or sleep!"
Anyway - thank you so much for posting this. I think I have another image to add to my desktop background rotation. :)