Phoenix lands on Mars

Yeah, cool stuff.

There’s a very real possibility (probably extremely low, though) that in a few days or weeks, we will have evidence of life on Mars.

Is that a collective sigh of relief from NASA that I hear?

If there isn’t already life on Mars, we’ve probably planted some microbes by sending spacecraft there, right?

I’m pretty sure they carefully sterilize the spacecraft they send to Mars, and maybe even to the moon. Who knows what might get missed, though, or manage to resist sterilization.

“Life will, uh, find a way…”

Great stuff! I was reading they estimated the chance of a successful landing at only 50%.

That’s pretty much why I wasn’t following it live… too much chance of massive disappointment.

If you believe some science, we’ve already sent microbes on little chunks of meteor ejecta.

Photos are starting to be posted, but it’s difficult to get in.

http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7

The Apollo mission that recovered part of a Lunar lander…I believe it was Surveyor…brought back Earth bacteria that survived on the arm.

The live feed was fantastic - lots of cheers each time they got past a crucial step. Neat too was following the MarsPhoenix twitter stream.

Well, I’m certainly glad this was the lead story on CTV National News tonight. I thought they might mention it 20 minutes in, after the latest tornado story. But they actually recognized the significance. Yay!

This stuff always makes me wish the commentary was written by the staff at The Onion - now that’s how to evoke the sheer awesomeness of the accomplishment!

Man, that was un-fucking-believably funny! :smiley:

yesyesyesyes
This is just so groovy. Every time I see pictures from another world, it punches so much harder than any fantasy painting. And those are waaay cool…

Try here. Generic, but fast links.

I can’t wait for the next set of photos to be released.

I think they were talking about the percentage of missions that have been successful in reaching Mars and not necessarily the predicted success for this mission.

I didn’t realise that the rate of failure for Mars’ probes has been so high, only 50% make it according to the Beeb. Well done NASA.

Very cool indeed.

That’s my favorite Onion story of all time. It’s what I show people to introduce them to The Onion.

I was cool to see the landing live (well the information get to Earth after traveling from Mars).

The speed of decsent slowing was brilliant and very tense. It started off at 1500KM and dropped fast till about 200 hundred metres IIRC. By the time it landed I think it was going at something like 2m/sec. See the techs in the landing centre react was class.

Great stuff and great work to the NASA guys. Something exciting to follow for a while.

Has anyone looked at those pictures? Where’s the ice? They said it would be a tundra.

Then shouldn’t it be ubiquitous, lodged in practically every nook and cranny as it is here on earth? If life is there, shouldn’t it be difficult NOT to stumble on it at almost every turn?