AfterTek

NASA was able to relax (if only for a moment) and congratulate one another for the successful landing of the Mars Phoenix Lander. Scientists have been working on the new spacecraft for months now and have been preparing it for the ‘7 minutes of terror’ that many have referred to the landing process.

The lander promises to not only prepare for the ongoing efforts to send humans to Mars, but also will further the investigation of the possibility that life once existed on Mars. Before it could complete its mission, though, it had to land. After months of travel through the dark depths of space, it reached the fringe of Mars’ atmosphere and began a plunge. The seven minute entry has been a punishing one on past satellites — of the 11 objects which various nations have tried to land on Mars, only 5 survived.

Safely landing requires aeroshell breaking, using a heat resistant shield to create friction with the atmosphere slowing its descent from catastrophic speeds. The side effect is the shield heats to thousands of degrees, increasing the chance of failures. After sufficiently reducing the speed, a parachute is deployed. This is yet another phase prone to past failures. Finally, the probe must use its retrorockets to gently touch down the surface, to prevent impact damage.

Unfortunately there’s no possibility for an Earth-driven landing sequence — Mars is 15 minutes away from the Earth in radio signal time. So the craft had to land autonomously. Shortly before 5:00 pm PDT on Sunday, NASA scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief when they received thumbs up signals from the satellite.

Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement Sunday that while the most difficult part perhaps — landing — had been conquered, challenges lay ahead. Said Goldstein, “We’ve passed the hardest part and we’re breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power.”

Then late on Sunday, after two hours of silence, the lander started sending back its first pictures, which confirmed that its solar arrays needed for the mission’s energy supply had unfolded properly, and masts for the stereo camera and weather station had swung into vertical position.

Ed Sedivy, Phoenix program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company enthusiastically stated, “Phoenix is an amazing machine, and it was built and flown by an amazing team. Through the entire entry, descent and landing phase, it performed flawlessly. The spacecraft stayed in contact with Earth during that critical period, and we received a lot of data about its health and performance. I’m happy to report it’s in great shape.”