[Phoenix has landed!!! My studio mate Dana's husband, Peter Smith, is the lead investigator of the Phoenix Mission. The spacecraft will dig into the Martian surface, looking for ice and hopefully organic material, and if it finds organics, that will be a very big deal. It's very exciting too, for the mission is, as I type, being controlled from a little building just a few blocks from my studio in Tucson, Arizona. I was down near Steward Observatory on campus this afternoon, when it landed, and we all watched the live feed from JPL, as it descended and came to rest. Much applause and a few tears by the scientists, some tears by me as well. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't notice by now, I'm a major geek with this kind of stuff. I remember seeing Saturn, live, with my own eyes, at age 15 in my little refractor telescope in my front yard in Raleigh, N.C.. And I'm proud for the U of A, and especially Peter Smith and his team. Good job, you all! Note: The above photo was pulled off of the NASA website. It's one of the first raw images to come back from Mars today. How cool is that, eh?]
[From less then 24 hours later, the first color composite of the Martian Polar Region. The men and women at Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) on 6th Avenue have been busy. Money, time and energy very well spent, if you ask me.]
My favorite bit was watching the video of the scientists in the control room when the signal came through. The happiest bunch of people you could imagine.
Posted by: Alex | May 27, 2008 at 10:48 AM