That’s right – Phoenix has landed on the surface of Mars. I think I’ll refrain from saying too much, and we’re still awaiting the first images, but it appears that the most dangerous part of the mission has come and gone.
A couple of thoughts. First, it is incredible how many people are involved in making something of this magnitude happen. You’ve got hundreds if not thousands building, transporting, launching the rocket, just as many making sure the machine gets there, not to mention the army of scientists. All of the people on TV tonight were a part of the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team. As far as they’re concerned, the Phoenix mission is now over. They’ve worked years for those 30 or so minutes, it went absolutely perfectly, and now they’re done.
As a scientist hoping to get in on a piece of the action (hopefully my former advisors will take advantage of my offer of free labor!), it’s very humbling to see this massive infrastructure in place just to even get to the science. We scientists are the ones who get to use the data and hopefully put it all together into a cohesive and meaningful story.
Anyway, more soon, but for now I’m celebrating with fingers still crossed. So far the engineers have done an incredible job – let’s hope the scientists can follow suit.
I hope you get a finger or so into the data. I worked with my students last summer on this topic of water ice under the south pole of Mars. We were looking at the radar images published in Nature and elsewhere, but all my students wanted to see what an actual shovel would turn up. Ought to be great hunting for all Mars scientists if this lander works well.