Apparently, NASA has dropped a new probe, Phoenix, on Mars. I’m looking at the first pictures beamed back, and so far, it looks a little too dry for squid, and they’re also promising the existence of ice, which doesn’t sound cephalopod-friendly, either. I’ll keep checking the Bad Astronomer, though — I’m sure that when the first tentacle rises up somewhere on the horizon, he’ll report it.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
What Then? W.B. Yeats
His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
“What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. “What then?”
Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
“What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ” What then?’
All his happier dreams came true – A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew, poets and Wits about him drew;
“What then.?’ sang Plato’s ghost. “What then?’
The work is done,’ grown old he thought,
“According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage,
I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost, “What then?’
I’m sure that when the first tentacle rises up somewhere on the horizon, he’ll report it.
http://www.badastronomy.com/pix/bablog/2008/phoenix_horizonbump.jpg
Just in case Tim Burton had Mars right, can the Phoenix play Slim Whitman’s “Indian love call”? Seriously, it’s great that it landed intact and I hope it digs up something interesting.
..that’s not a tentacle, that’s Elvis of course.
Just because it’s too dry for cephalopods makes it a more worthy challenge, surely? Time for that JFK moment – “We choose to send squid to Mars and return them safely to Earth. We choose to send them to Mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. Also, they’re very tasty with a sidesalad and a little horseradish.”
Calamari to Mars! And beyond!
What’s with the “apparently”s? The NYTimes headline from last night sounded the same, and also started with “apparently.”
The phrasing makes it sound like this is a bit of a surprise to everybody, like “Apparently, the Queen enjoys playing rugby in the nude.”
Me, I would have said “Probe’s landing on Mars apparently successful,” so casual readers wouldn’t think we thought NASA was doing stuff behind our backs.
One nice aspect of this entry/descent/landing is that it was tracked by three satellites already orbiting Mars. All three were listening for Phoenix telemetry and ESA’s Mars Express should have also snapped some nice pictures of Phoenix while it lit up the Martian sky.
This mission was pretty special, usually these rocket assisted landers get dropped after orbiting the planet a couple of times, instead this mission didn’t waste time going into orbit, it arrived at Mars and plunged into it’s atmosphere rightaway.
It’s going to get pretty busy around Mars, there is a Russian mission to Phobos planned to launch next year and ESA is preparing their first rover mission to Mars which will carry a drill to reach 2 meters into the soil. Then there is another NASA project which is looking at dropping a nuclear powered rover on Mars with more experiments on board then you can shake a stick at.
It’s all great stuff, maybe if there’s some money left over, someone can build you narrowminded earth biologists a dinky little sub to explore the oceans with :)
I’m glad it was successful, I was watching the landing on the NASA channel biting my nails the entire time.
#6, I agree with your concern over the disconcerting use of the word apparently; however, we can all take a deep sigh of relief no one (so far as I know) has used the word, “allegedly.”
Apparently, “allegedly” is allegedly more fun.
(.)(.)
Appropriately, if disconcertingly for some, the subject in the SubGenius alt.slack newsgroup is, NASA lands probe on “Mars”.
Since Christ died “for all creation,” I wonder how that relates to Mars.
They have a blog as well.
Isn’t that the one that IIRC will eat up most of the reserves for NTGs? The next trip after that would require a major investment in nuclear material reprocessing AFAIU. No more free rides on the military-industrial complex.
Which, I guess, is A Good Thing. I was just reminded that Phoenix wasn’t only a reuse of scrapped hardware, and omitted expensive orbit maneuvers/hardware, but instated after a NASA competition for missions. And is an exercise in the kind of landing sequence expected for heavy future missions. More Good Things.
Keeping my fingers crossed for some scientific returns though. Maybe it is mentioned in some BA comments, but if the lander has an amazing one quarter of a degree slant, it sure looks like a passed test of the hypotheses of an ancient sea bottom to me.
Off Topic, but recently my load time for Pharyngula using Firefox is so slow that it is as though it is coming from Mars.
Other ScienceBlog sites, Wikipedia, DailyKos, etc. load in a reasonable time.
Any one else having a problem?
Safari captures Pharyngula quickly. A mystery here.
Safari captures Pharyngula quickly. A mystery here.
Safari captures Pharyngula quickly. A mystery here.
I dunno if water is so good for cephalopods after all. I just got back from a fossil hunting trip down at the creek (what we call creeks here would pass for rivers pretty much everywhere else).
I found a stunning little cephalopod fossil. The detail was astonishing, best I’ve ever seen. The layer I was working on was full of well preserved fossils, most still with remnants of organic material.
Dribbled a little water on it and it washed away at the touch of my finger. That’s what sucks about that layer – the preservation is amazing, but the fossils are often too fragile to collect.
Firefox working fine here.
No problems with Firefox here.
No probs for me (FF3 + Ubuntu 8.04)
The Phoenix Probe named after…
A mythical bird that never dies, the phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space.
Who said, NASA wasn’t religious…lol…The rover projects are remarkable considering it was only suppose to last 3 months, currently it’s been about 4 years. I have also seen the new pic from the Phoenix probe. More is suppose to be downloaded to the NASA site later tonight. Since they are looking for life or at least elements for life in a process in which they believed happened on earth why wasn’t the probe given the capability to detect such things?
Ubuntu 8.04 with Firefox 3 working great…
I’ve got Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 8.04 and it loads quickly enough, but it never really finishes loading. I assumed it was the Firebug beta acting up over something, but I dunno.
The Barsoomian radium guns didn’t get this one.
Oh, man! These Cthulhu worshippers… it’s everything about their freakin’ SQUID!… Aargh!
:p
(emphasis mine)
I don’t know if Mars Express captured images of Phoenix’s descent, but the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter certainly did.
Phil also posted a video about that image on his website.
Whups, the links came out a little wonky. < ^^;;; MRO captures Phoenix on the way down
Phil’s video on the MRO pic
@27 – Togusa, the HiRISE performed! I left a kudo at the Az HiRISE blog
This is awesome – Hopefully the MRO/HiRISE will have pics of the Phoenix landing site tomorrow.
Mars bacteria…WANT!
Off Topic, but recently my load time for Pharyngula using Firefox is so slow that it is as though it is coming from Mars.
You need to route through the subspace proxy on Phobos, and set coding in firefox to “Barsoomian”.
Sounds like “firefox” is in some kind of worm hole…lol
So that’s what happened to Dumbledore’s phoenix after the fifth movie. No wonder he effectively kills himself in volumme six after losing such a valued friend….
@Togusa
It seems the MRO succeeded beautifully indeed, I’m not sure why the Mars Express team hasn’t released their snapshot, maybe they missed Phoenix, or maybe they don’t want to publicly release it yet out of courtesy while NASA is still basking in the middle of all the press attention.
It could also be because ESA is using some AI software to automate science data transfer between Mars and Earth and didn’t give any special priority to the data that the HRSC and SPICAM instruments captured. They did supply the Phoenix telemetry data that Mars Express recieved to NASA right away, so really, I’m just conjecturing.
I just know I want to see both pictures, yesterday!
I was expecially excited to watch this live Sunday. Why? Because as a graduate of the University of Arizona in Aerospace Engineering, I knew a lot of the people being interviewed there. =)
My wife got tired of me saying “I know that guy!”. =P
It was very cool to watch, and I can’t wait to see some the papers that get generated once the excavating begins.
Cheers
All that money and all for just for sending a piece of computer equipment to a planet with no tangible resources. Hmm…why not spend the money to other worthy endeavors like found an alternative solution to the energy challenge, the education system, or hand out scholarships.