Watching Phoenix land last night was incredible, and it has confirmed my love of and belief in space exploration. This kind of event is in some ways a referendum on the space program, a chance for non-experts to express their opinions and share in an adventure. Spending much of my time among scientists, it is enormously encouraging to see the kind of enthusiasm my friends have shown for Phoenix’s mission. As the seconds ticked by and the lander descended, we were sweating it out ourselves, hunched in a small room in London thousands of miles away from the action (and hundreds of millions of miles away from the real action). When the EDL team cheered on the screen, we did too, even if we weren’t entirely clear on why. A couple of interesting thoughts from the room:

- This whole process would be infinitely more exciting if it were people landing on Mars.

- We watched NASA TV’s coverage: those of you in the States, was it covered on any of the networks?

- NASA is an intriguing entity, almost unique among government agencies in its need to sell its product to the people. Their website is impressive – equal to any multinational company out there. And the “pre-game” coverage looked pretty solid, with those pre-recorded segments and whatnot. That said, they needed some sort of an anchor (an Al Michaels of space exploration) telling us what was going on, filling those pregnant pauses at the most critical moments of the process.

- Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), so much of the landing process is left to the imagination. We can’t see the flaming heat shield, hear the rippling parachute, or see the swirls of dust kicked up by the retrorockets. One revolutionary capability, however, is this:

That’s the parachute carrying the lander towards the surface, as seen by HiRISE aboard MRO. Just think about the logistics involved. Phoenix is moving across the planet and down while MRO is orbiting hundreds of miles up at thousands of miles per hour: the precision needed to make this picture happen is mind-boggling.