Phoenix Lander Landed
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the Martian North pole this afternoon. This is awesome. It was the first soft-landing of a craft on Mars since the Viking 2 landed over 30 years ago. Soft landings are awesome.
Entering the atmosphere traveling over 12,000 mph, Phoenix burned off some heat shielding slowing itself to nearly 900mph. A parachute deployed and in a few seconds the craft decelerated to a mere 250mph. It’s at this point that the little planet-hopping robot started scanning the ground below with radar and other instruments, and planning the rest of it’s own descent.
Around 3,200’ up, the lander disconnected from the parachute and began to free-fall again. Retrorockets fired to ensure proper orientation, and eventually bring the Phoenix lander to a soft landing. Awesome. The last time this kind of landing was attempted, by the Mars Polar Lander in 1999, the thing cratered.