The phenomenal HiRISE camera which snapped Phoenix beneath its parachute has now seen Phoenix sitting on the Martian surface. In fact, it sees the lander, the parachute, the back shell and the heat shield!
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| Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; click to embiggen |
This is quite an extraordinary picture. The Phoenix lander is bluish and sits at the top of the field. You can see dust disturbed around it, no doubt from the exhaust of the landing thrusters as it descended. At the bottom is the bright parachute, and just above it is the back shell; the part of the apparatus that connected the parachute to the lander. To the right center is the heat shield, blackened by its fiery descent. It must have bounced when it hit, making the blurry splotch to the left of the better-defined shield itself. And, of course, zooms are provided. Looks like the back shell bounced a bit too, or was dragged a little by the parachute.
[edited to add: Oops! In the next paragraph, I got the descent path going the wrong way. In the comments, To Seek made a good point: the heat shield would still be moving rapidly when it was ejected from the lander, while the lander was slowing due to the drag from the ‘chute. I forgot about momentum and which part of the lander was slowing! So the actual entry angle is from the upper left, moving to the lower right. Everything else is pretty much the same though.]
To my eye, it looks like the lander came in from the lower right upper left. The heat shield fell before the parachute was disconnected, then the lander landed. The winds must have been blowing roughly down and to the left a little, since the parachute was disconnected before the lander touched down as well. That’s consistent with the shell being dragged a little bit toward the bottom of the picture. The scattered dust also seems to be blown down and to the left as well. I’m not sure why the heat shield would have bounced up and to the right, but maybe it hit a rock or a slight incline. Otherwise I’d expect it to be up below and to the left right of the blotch, along the ground track of the descent. Or I may be totally wrong here. 
Edited to add: I was!
For a sense of scale, the solar panels are about 5.5 meters (roughly 18 feet) tip to tip across the lander. That’s about 22 pixels in this image. That puts the (approximate) distances of the parts from the lander as 50 130 meters to the heat shield, 100 250 meters to the parachute, and 90 230 meters to the back shell. So basically everything you’re seeing here would fit comfortably inside a couple of football stadiums.
Holy Haleakala.
Well, I’ll spare you the histrionics this time, and just say wow. Nice work HiRISE folks! And my sincere and heartfelt congratulations to NASA and everyone who worked on this amazing series of events!
May 27th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Curiosly, the starring characters this two days are MRO/HiRISE and not Phoenix by its own merits
Any way, congratulations for the stunning images.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Wow, indeed. This is so cool! Next best thing to being there.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Amazing stuff, how much more exciting could this mission be?
May 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Jim, just wait until the science gets started!
May 27th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Haleakala Almighty:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001468/
May 27th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Wow!! And the great pictures documenting this outstanding mission keep coming, and I LOVE IT!
Question: I can’t help but notice the darkened area around the lander itself. I’m assuming this is due to the actions of the retro-rockets, blowing the top layer of the Martian soil structure - which happens to be icy and light in color - revealing a somewhat darker layer underneath. How is this going to impact the upcoming measurements? Again I’m assuming any residual chemical contaminants from the rockets will be “subtracted” from the results obtained from the measurements.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Phill, would the Crew Stage have made it to the surface or would it burn up?
May 27th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Unless the image is north-south inverted, the lander came in from the left. That would make sense to me as the lander’s rockets stopped its horizontal motion, while the backshell and heatshield would have continued further.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
[…] Via Bad Astronomy: […]
May 27th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Again, Outstanding!! Can’t wait to see what’s in/under the dust????
May 27th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
phoenix has a twitter feed, too:
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix
May 27th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Why don’t we use the HiRISE to find the Beagle 2
May 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Phoenix might have snapped a pic of it’s chute here: http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=509&cID=8
(Found thanks to ms’s link to the twitter feed)
May 27th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Could the parachute and back shell be the “anomalies” in the original images seen just after Phoenix landed? The white object sticking up?
May 27th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I think Beagle 2 was a lot smaller than Phoenix. But they have most certainly tried looking for it. It’s just a lot more difficult when you don’t know where to look, exactly.
Phoenix has pretty much learnt all the lessons from the failed missions.
Speaking of B2: http://www.bunny-comic.com/?id=1166
May 27th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
This is indeed an amazing photo, but your estimates for distances make no sense to me. By my judgement the distances are WAY bigger than you say. Have I missed something? I didn’t realise the solar panels were that large anyway - 5.5 metres is pretty big!
May 27th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Another wonderful action shot in perspective:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/?p=190
May 27th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
It looks to me as if the heat shield is more like 160ish meters and the backshell at around 275m. It looks like about 20-21m of rope between the backshell and the chute itself. That’s if the lander is 5.5m wide
May 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Holy cow, seeing something BLUE on Mars really stands out.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
To expand on Ala’a’s question: How deep will Phoenix’s shovel be digging? Is there any anger that the heat from the craft’s rockets may have damaged any potential evidence of past life…. Perhaps even sterilized the samples of any existing life? Granted I’m sure the people at NASA have already taken this into consideration, but let’s not forget that nine years ago they screwed up something as basic as converting Metric to English units.
Incidentally, I came across a photo of an interesting rock formation on Mars. Not sure if it’s from Phoenix, however.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
[…] Denne uges Marslanding har resulteret i nogle helt fantastiske billeder. Ikke billeder taget fra sonden selv - men billeder af selve sonden set fra rummet. Se dem her og her! […]
May 27th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I expect another blog entry from Phil any time now. He’s probably passed out from excitement from seeing that latest chute photo! I know I did. I just started breathing again a few moments ago, after picking myself up off the floor. I need a seatbelt for this mission!
Wooo!
Tom
May 27th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Lugosi:
It’s obviously faked. Look at the shadow from the red/green outcrop, which goes in a different direction than the other shadows. This proves that there were two light sources!
May 27th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
So why haven’t lunar satellites been able to spot any of the lunar rovers from the Apollo missions (this is a serious question; I’m not suggesting the missions were a hoax or anything)?
May 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
If i’m not mistaken the lander was instructed to move into the wind a little after letting go of the chute, to minimize the chances of it dropping on the lander.
This might explain the offset between heatshield, lander and chute in the picture although that is pure speculation on my part.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Ah, I see - the whole lander including the panels is 5.5m? Then I think sysboy has it about right. I thought each PANEL was 5.5m
May 27th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
The image have 1388 pixels from top to bottom, so that give us 347 meters (22 pixels = 5.5 meters). The backshell is at least 225 meters from Phoenix.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
What would cause the parachute to drag if there is no atmosphere on Mars?
May 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Ian B. Gibson, no one has flown lunar orbiters with cameras as sensitive as the ones orbiting Mars.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
David, why do you think there is no atmosphere on Mars? That is clearly wrong. The whole concept of a heat shield is required because of the Martian atmosphere. So is a parachute.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Does this mean that we soon will see another of your flapping arms and spit on the lens videos?
May 27th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
What would cause the parachute to drag if there is no atmosphere on Mars?
David, Mars does have an atmosphere, it’s just not as nice as ours (or as dense). Why else would they use a parachute?
I’m wondering if said atmosphere could drag the parachute around and imperil the lander — any chance of this, or is the backshell too heavy?
May 27th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
“So why haven’t lunar satellites been able to spot any of the lunar rovers from the Apollo missions (this is a serious question; I’m not suggesting the missions were a hoax or anything)?”
Because MRO has a relatively huge .5-meter aperture telescope on it, much bigger than what’s in orbit around the Moon, about 10 times the area.
MRO’s is still smaller than Hubble, but Hubble’s too far from the Moon.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
To add to Irishman’s comment of David’s post, if there is no atmosphere on Mars, what is kicking up those dust storms that cloak the planet from time to time or cause those nice little dust devils the rovers have snapped pictures of?
And why bother putting a small weather station on Pheonix? If there is no atmosphere, seems to me the weather would be pretty dull.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
IIRC HiRise was claimed to be the sharpest camera/telescope used on any planetary mission ever. I guess for any of the recent’ish moon missions the image requirements for the mission were lower, and/or budget (weight or financial) constraints prohibited using a HiRise quality camera.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I’m wondering if the back shell or other items could be that mysterious “blip” in the first Phoenix image.. you know, the bump on the horizon. From its perspective the bump wouldn’t necessarily be that far away.
Or of course it could be a small rock outcrop. Certainly isn’t too important for this kind of mission.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled for launch late this year will have a high resolution camera that will image the lunar surface at 0.5m/pixel. It’s smaller in diameter than HiRISE, (0.2m versus 0.5m) but the lack of atmosphere means that the spacecraft can be much closer to the surface. Even so, HiRISE images at 0.3m/pixel resolution are of higher resulotion than LROC’s at 0.5m/pixel
May 27th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Looks to me that the lander came from the left with a slight angle towards top. After the heat shield disconnected it went further by its inertia, and the lander slowed down because of the parachute. The parachute disconnected, and went to bottom because of the wind. The lander went against the wind a bit and landed. This is consistent with the heat shield bouncing direction.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Jest:
I was thinking that myself, but looking at the HiRISE image there is a small black dot NNW or SSE of the lander (sorry haven’t figured out direction) are the landers panels facing west to east? Anyway here’s a an image I, I ringed the dot.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2072/2528397799_70078ebd3f_b.jpg
Could that be the same blip on the horizon in this shot?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2371/2528397813_fa5d198a2d_o.jpg
May 27th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
The images released by the HiRISE team have north about 7 degrees to the left of straight up:
See http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-hardware_11.php
Comparing this to the landing ellipse
http://www.planetary.org/image/phoenix_landing_site_usgs_map_ellipse_shifted.jpg
in which Phoenix enters from the WNW, it is clear that the entry direction for these images is also approximately from WNW — about 10 o’clock. Speculation based on how the wind was blowing, how the heat shield bounced, and what travelled farther than what just don’t beat looking at the data.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
[…] Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a detailed interpretation of what we’re seeing here. What struck me was how much darker the landing site looks compared […]
May 27th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thank you Timothy. It did seem counter-intuitive to me after I thought some more, since for my guess to be true the lander would have to been given some significant side velocity, which would have to be canceled again too.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Check out this incredible image: http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/PSP_008579_9020_descent.jpg
May 27th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Mike Torr, the panels are 5.5 meters across the length of the lander. In other words, that’s the length of the entire assembly; the panels are only about 2 meters across each. I edited the text to reflect that!
To Seek, I fixed the text with the ground track. You’re right. As usual.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
It’s so refreshing to read the cerebral comments on the BA blog after seeing the varied inane comments on CNN’s blog. Too bad the idiots outnumber us. Now there’s a “Mars Hoax!”
Get to work Phil.
KP
May 27th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Anyone know why the heat shield made 2 holes? did it bounce or did it come in 2 parts?
May 27th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Simply amazing…and I wish we had an MRO-like platform orbiting the moon now. I want to see the leftover Apollo equipment!
May 27th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
FYI, the LROC instrument to be launched onboard LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) later this year will be comparable to HiRise in terms of resolution (0.5m), and will probably make some images of the Apollo (and hopefully Lunokhod) sites.
http://www.msss.com/lro/lroc/index.html
May 27th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
[…] my reports are secondary to The Planetary Society’s reports (see here, too) and especially Phil Plait, who really picked up the slack when the Planetary Society’s servers came under a DOS […]
May 27th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
This might be a stupid question, but what mechanism or system is in place to make sure the parachute doesn’t end up draped over the top of the lander? I assume that such an event is astronomically (heh) unlikely, but was just wondering if that eventually was catered for at all?
May 27th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Timothy: It don’t beat looking at the data, but my guess was almost correct
May 27th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
david: It’s not a stupid question at all. Having the parachute come down on the lander — even partially preventing solar panel deployment — would be a devastating scenario. The landing does not depend on luck to skirt these admittedly slim odds; a maneuver was designed into the landing to prevent it. The ground radar determines wind speed and direction. In strong wind, the height of parachute separation is calculated to be sufficient to carry the parachute beyond the lander. In weak wind the lander uses its thrusters to maneuver the lander upwind after parachute separation, carrying it out of range.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I agree the wind was blowing from top to bottom based on the dust and the direction the backshield was dragged (assuming the splotch above it is the impact crater it appears to be). I can imagine the lander coming from upper left, and the path of each part after seperation. The only bit I have trouble with is how did the heat shield change direction so drasticly on it’s bounce? Or could it have been approaching from due west, about half way up, let’s say the “equator” of the picture in a mild crosswind–with the crosswind blowing “north to south”? If the lander is programmed to fly upwind, that would take it “north” in the picture, the breeze would push the ‘chute “south”, and the heat shield would continue due east, greatly reducing the change in direction it would have to make on bouncing. It would go from “almost back on itself” to “a glancing blow”.
Maybe the forum would be a better place to ask, let me run over there.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Awesome image … thought it makes me wonder: When will people start complaining about us littering mars? After all, who is going to get the parachute, heat shield and backshell to the recycling centre?
May 28th, 2008 at 1:29 am
It’s like flying over the Australian outback and spotting a BBQ that somebody have forgotten there, even down to the BBQ cover and plastic garden furniture table that’s blowing away.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:43 am
So rubbish!!! The first thing over tne marcian surface is RUBBISH!!
Obviously mankind always repeiat themselves!!! Sadness.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:45 am
great pictures. Unfortunately, the credulous talking heads on the cable news outlets have already started the woo-fest. A recent report on one network started out fine, telling about the Phoenix lander and it’s touchdown on Mars. And then after about 15 seconds of this: “and some experts are looking at what could be signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence” . (cut to the photo linked in Tim Froehlich’s reply)
The only thing missing was some theramin music and Richard Hoagland.
:::sigh:: I suppose it’s too much of me to ask that a cable news outlet (MSNBC in this instance) do something like… have someone with a science background following the story in depth to report on the matter without delving into material best left for the grocery store tabloid papers.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:47 am
No matter how much I zoom into the image, I can only make the lander a maximum of 17 pixels across and a minimum of 15. Since the lander is 5.5 metres across, then we get between 2.73 and 3.1 pixels per metre.
The pixel count from the centre of the lander to the centre of the parachute is about 986 pixels, which yields a landerparachute distance of between 317 and 360 metres.
I simply can’t make the distances as small as your posting claims. In any case, just looking at the image it is quite obviously a lot more than ten lander’s widths between the lander and the parachute, so 100 metres has to be way off the mark.
Not that it really matters, of course, since these images are absolutely stunning in their own right. But still, this is the Bad Astronomy forum, where nits just have to be picked
May 28th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Peeee—Yeeeeeewwww!
The International Space Station’s toilet is broke!
One can only wonder how bad the stink will get by the time NASA sends a plumber up there…
May 28th, 2008 at 6:23 am
OK - so I have too much time on my hands. I created a strip of fifty Phoenix landers, for a total of about 275 metres, and overlaid it on the original. Take a look here: http://tinyurl.com/3lq9aj
May 28th, 2008 at 6:29 am
But one of the big mysteries of the universe will be answered: is plumbers crack gravity dependant?
May 28th, 2008 at 6:32 am
That HiRISE is one mean camera!
May 28th, 2008 at 8:08 am
wow, amazing - chris @ www.gofrostfire.com
May 28th, 2008 at 8:32 am
What I’m missing is a diagram showing the entire planet with an indication of where the probe has landed.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Okay Phil, your distances are off. From Emily:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001472/
Lugosi said:
> Granted I’m sure the people at NASA have already taken this into consideration, but let’s not forget that nine years ago they screwed up something as basic as converting Metric to English units.
To be fair, they didn’t screw up the conversion, but rather miscommunicated between two groups which units they were using. It’s not like they mulitiplied by 2.6 instead of 2.54.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I was looking again at the image, and realized I had messed up the scaling: I used the wrong image to get the pixel positions of the parachute and so on. I redid the math, and the numbers increased by about a factor of 2.5 or so. Sorry about any confusion.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Phil,
No comments on the HiRISE wide crater/chute photo yet? I’d say that would definitely be worth another fine BA video!
I’m just hoping to see what you say about that shot. I know you feel the same way about it as most of us, so I figure we would let you babble about it. I can’t - I’m speechless!
Tom
May 28th, 2008 at 10:48 am
[…] Het zal bij sommige lezers inmiddels de neus- c.q. spuigaten uitlopen, maar mij blijft het nieuws over de Phoenix mij iedere keer weer heugelijk verbazen. De HiRISE camera op de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) bijvoorbeeld heeft vanuit de ruimte de drie onderdelen op Mars gespot die daar maandagnacht neerkwamen: de parachute, het hitteschild en de Phoenix Mars Lander zelf. Op de foto hiernaast zijn ze alle drie te zien. Ik weet niet precies wat een back shell in het Nederlands is, maar het zit in ieder geval bevestigd aan de parachute (sommigen een tip?). Om de Phoenix zie je prachtig de grond donker afsteken ten opzichte van de rest van het oppervlak, veroorzaakt door de klap van het neerkomen. Phil Plait heeft even de moeite genomen (waarvoor hartelijk dank) om de afstanden tussen Phoenix en de rest uit te rekenen: tot het hitteschild 130 meter, de parachute 250 meter en 230 meter tot de back shell, wat dat ook voor ding moge wezen. Bron: Bad Astronomy. […]
May 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Ala’a said:
> Question: I canâ??t help but notice the darkened area around the lander itself. Iâ??m assuming this is due to the actions of the retro-rockets, blowing the top layer of the Martian soil structure - which happens to be icy and light in color - revealing a somewhat darker layer underneath. How is this going to impact the upcoming measurements? Again Iâ??m assuming any residual chemical contaminants from the rockets will be â??subtractedâ?? from the results obtained from the measurements.
Some useful info here:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/science.php
The plan is to dig down below the existing surface to the soil/water-ice interface.
The samples will come from areas undisturbed by the retrorockets.
Lugosi said:
> To expand on Alaâ??aâ??s question: How deep will Phoenixâ??s shovel be digging? Is there any anger that the heat from the craftâ??s rockets may have damaged any potential evidence of past lifeâ?¦. Perhaps even sterilized the samples of any existing life?
The scientists think the surface is too harsh for any current life - UV rays and oxidizing environment. That is why the want to look under the surface.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Okay, Phil, the software is having trouble with apostrophes.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Another random question: Emily posted this in her blog:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001470/
What does that mean? Polygons?
May 28th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Fabulous! These images truly rank as some of the best our space exploration efforts have produced to date (IMHO).
From a personal perspective, I still think that the Hubble Deep Field is the most thought provoking and amazing image ever taken by humans. I just happen to have a soft spot for galaxies though!
Thanks for your personal insights as well.
May 31st, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Can someone explain to me how Phoenix can operate at minus 30 to minus 80 degrees celsius? I work in a very cold climate and when it hits minus 30 nothing starts unless heated when it hits minus 40 even machines that are runninng full time need to be operated very cautiously when it hits minus 50 almost everything comes to a stand still at minus 60 it is at a standstill and nothing moves and I haven’t seen minus 70 and 80. I operate a 20 ton excavating machine and when the ground has been frozen by minus 40 degree tempretures the 20 ton machine has a very difficult time breaking the frozen ground. How can a machine with the weight of Phoenix dig in ground that has been frozen by tempretures exceeding minus 8o degrees celsius? How did the solar panels unfurl at minus 40 degrees without breaking?
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Fossilman, I imagine that Phoenix is heated. As I recall, the two Mars rovers have to be parked at night where they can catch the light in the morning, to power the heaters so that they can move. As to the regolith, that’s loose material, dryer than Saharan desert sands, so there’s nothing there to bind the gravel together in the cold.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:33 am
[…] is also a good word to describe the photos from phoenix’ landing shot by the HiRise spacecraft - see here and here (and while you#re at it read also the rest of Emily Lakdawallas blog at he […]