The Mars Phoenix Lander will be touching down on the surface of Mars on Sunday at 23:53:52 Universal Time (4:53 p.m. Pacific time). Of course, there will be lots of action leading up to that moment.
You can get live info from a few different sources.
For online video and such, your best bet is NASA TV. If you have it, The Science Channel is covering it live on TV. And if you want live blogging action, Emily’s your destination. She has a nice schedule on her blog of the whole thing. She’s also been doing some great blogging on the pre-landing press conferences, so she has all the info you want. And if you’re in the Tucson area, the Lunar and Planetary Institute Lab has a ton of stuff going on for the whole family.
As for me, I was thinking about Twittering it, but now I’ve decided I want to sit back and enjoy it, and let others worry about conveying information. I’m not an expert on Mars or Phoenix, so for once I’ll be a consumer.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
I’ll be at UofA for the landing and then heading up to Kitt Peak in the evening… I can’t wait! It looks like it will be a a lot of fun…
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is showing it:
http://www.dmns.org/main/en/General/Education/AdultProgram/Lectures/Programs/PhoenixOnMarsLive.htm
I went to the Deep Impact showing they did and it was awesome, I have no doubt this will be too.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hey thanks for the Tucson info! Its not very often we get informed of how our amazing astronomy department at the UofA is handling things like this, and the schedule looks entertaining.
It will be interesting, but hopefully this mission is a little more successful than the last.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
That’s the Lunar and Planetary Lab (LPL).
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 am
Phil, I want to take this opportunity to say thanks to Emily for all the hard work she’s doing with Phoenix (and plenty other stuff too). She has a young baby and when Emily makes these commitments to us she makes them on behalf of the baby also, those of us with children will understand that. So thanks Emily. Many of us around the globe would like to sit in at JPL, and when you blog and stream you get us as near to JPL as we can get.
Cheers
BigBob
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I really do hope everything goes smoothly! Let’s go Phoenix!
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Here in Canada, The Discovery Channel will be carrying it live.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
We will be watching at 7:53pm EST Sunday then!!!
But is that actual touchdown or when we should be getting the signal? It’s a 20 minute difference, after all..
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
A somewhat simplified timeline – but using more sources – is (growing) here. The greatest unknown – for us ‘consumers’ – remains the time when we’ll see the first pictures from the surface: NASA itself doesn’t know, because it depends on unforseeable inter-spacecraft bandwidth issues (wow, what a cool tech speak
.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Oops! I misread the URL as LPI not LPL. Heh. Thanks, I fixed it.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Nothing wrong with sitting back and enjoying other people work, I’ve been doing it for years. Welcome to the couch, Phil.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:34 pm
“But is that actual touchdown or when we should be getting the signal? It’s a 20 minute difference, after all..”
Emily’s posted schedule explains, but the time Phil quotes is Earth Received Time. The actual event is about 15 minutes earlier.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Thanks a lot for the tip!
Would have missed it if I hadn’t had recently started checking out your blog, (popular) astronomy/skepticism combo is just the my kind if thing.
I hope you keep doing what you’re doing for a long time.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I searched for “mars phoenix twitter” and got this as one result:
https://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix
I don’t use the service and therefore can’t imagine a reason for a duplicate source of information.
Unless, that is, if I think of myself as a cat waiting patiently underneath the nest. Multiple sources of tweeting would be quite beneficial in that circumstance.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Twitter seems to be experiencing some technical difficulties.
At last tweet, Phoenix reported:
“Entry, descent and landing sequence for Sunday has been uploaded. Must do landing autonomously! Mission control can only watch and wait.
about 15 hours ago from web”
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
PML is sitting ominously at the bottom of this Success/Failure list. Looks like the Russians have had a lot of bad luck on past missions.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/log/
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
riki,
I see that list as an increase in successful missions over time.
To see it otherwise would be like expecting a newborn to run a triathalon at birth.
No person will die if it fails.
Humanity will gain if it succeeds.
Place your hope is the success of our species and its ability to build upon knowledge gathered.
Faith and Trust can be found in the artifacts that we send into the universe. One need only look into the smiling eyes of those who helped to launch parts of our minds into the vastness of space to see the true intent of our evolutionary process.
My thoughts are directed at those magnificent humans who’ve made it possible to land a robot on Mars’ polar caps.
Regardless of the belief systems of your fellow humans, know that many of us are directing our thoughts to you and your endeavors.
Continue to focus on the skies.
Continue to direct our gaze upward.
Kol
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
If you would just let slip that Lindsay Lohan will be on Mars to watch the landing, you can trick a camera crew into going there first to get better footage of the landing.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Hi BA!
I thought you might want to see this:
http://hup.hu/node/55255
It’s a Hungarian competition organized by a small town’s high scool where teams have to build Mars rovers, and then send them to take samples or do basic tasks that the real rovers did.
They need to implement some kind of AI since the rovers must be operated with a delay to make it a bit more realistic.
It’s sad that I only heard about it now, since “Hungarians on Mars” has been held for 3 years now.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Nature’s Eric Hand (yeah, okay, I work for Nature too) has a nice Tucson-based blog at http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/events/nasa_phoenix_landing/, if you want the view from the science operations center in Arizona to complement the JPL onslaught.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Looks like the tech guys at NASA are also partial to good luck charms
Peanuts and Rolling Stones on hand for Mars landing
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13977-peanuts-and-rolling-stones-on-hand-for-mars-landing.html
May 25th, 2008 at 9:38 am
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May 25th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Mars Phoenix Lander at 23:53:52 (UT) 4:53 p.m. (PDT)…
Today is the day for the Mars Phoenix Lander to land on Mars. These details are from Phil’s Bad Astronomy Blog.
The Mars Phoenix Lander will be touching down on the surface of Mars on Sunday at 23:53:52 Universal Time (4:53 p.m. Pacific time). O…
May 25th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
No offense to Emily, but for my Mars landing liveblogging needs, I’ve always gone with Spaceflight Now; they had a really good liveblog of the Spirit and Opportunity landings, and their Phoenix mission status center looks to be off to a good start.