Less tha 23 hours left

...before the Mars Phoenix Lander tries to land on Mars. Nasa's praying that this landing goes well, but seeing that over 55% of NASA'S missions to mars have failed, these last and final hours has everyone in JPL biting their fingernails.

Do you think it will make it


link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/

ack, ack, ack

I hope it's a success!

If it fails it's Bush's fault....and because of Global warming..which also is Bush's fault.

If it makes it it's because of the greatness of Lord Obama who gave it his blessings.

Depends on which little green man is on duty that day.

Oh, fuck the landers right in the ass. We are full of that shit. Lets put a real human on the planet. People can relate to someone being there for real, otherwise they might as well fake the videos, what is the difference.

Getting them there I don't think would be a problem. Getting them back is what I'm worried about


Heres a video of how things are SUPPOSED to go

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080525m.html


I just hope that they do.

Red > Tech

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html -> live on NASA TV. 'course it has to start at 6pm EST which is around midnight here

Interesting blog they have.

I bet on a crash landing. They probably used the wrong measurement system again.

What do you bet there'd be volunteers lined up around the block even at 50/50 odds? Or worse?

This probe is going to be stationary? Wouldn't the retro rockets destroy any life in the spot it's landing at?

It's going to dig and look for life half a meter below the surface.

On the surface, probably yeah. But it is digging below the surface.

Also while the heat of landing would probably kill anything that was living on the surface the remains would still be there, leaving organic molecules to be detected.

30 minutes! I got the tv on the NASA channel.

I just got to work so can't watch the NASA tv feed. If everything goes to plan does anyone know how long it should take for the first shots to come back?

http://www.nasa.gov/

And we are GOLD, baby! Down and safe!

w00t! Soft landing and good comm.

no pooches screwed today...

Twitter feed for the probe: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

Go NASA! Pretty amazing that this type of thing works when you think how complicated it is.

Not out of the woods yet. Once the solar panels are deployed, the mission will be pretty much gtg.

Even just managing to make a powered landing on another planet is pretty amazing.

Once the KVH-1A1 high-gain is deployed, Phoenix will immediately begin broadcasting Bob Newhart records to see if Mars has a sense of humor.

[?=First images are coming in!!!][/?]

Actually, NASA runs their gear on Linux.

Watching live coverage on the Science Channel Mars Live...the young guy being periodically interviewed is Chris Lewicki...he's an old friend from college, and he was the president of UA SEDS in the 90's. Now he's a bigshot at NASA JPL. He and his wife are engineers. He worked on the rovers. He in-part introduced me to my (now ex-)wife. His future wife and mine were college buddies & roomies. She sometimes babysat my oldest when she was a newborn.

Nice guy - wicked prankster (one April 1st, I helped him and some other SEDS guys plant a "Mars Face" replica in the LPL Mars Garden.

But he makes me...well, reminds me...what a failure my life is.

Well, go Chris!

SEDS FORUMS

NOW, WHERE ARE THE GORRAM PICS!?!?!?