Phoenix's Photo Finish

by Damon Gambuto     Department: Space

The Phoenix Mars Lander has begun its tour of the Martian polar region and already we've seen some amazing photos of the planet's surface, but my favorite images (thus far) were snapped right before the lander touched down.

Floating above the Red Planet is NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which kept its mechanical eye trained on the Phoenix as it plummeted to the Mars surface.  Using the (fantastically acronymed) High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter actually caught the lander, chute unfurled, descending toward the edges of the Heimdall crater.  In the photo below you can see an (improved, pull-out, full-res) image of the lander in the bottom left corner.  The tiny, speck image of the lander (inside the square) looks to be headed right for the 10 kilometer wide crater, but actually ended up about 20 kilometers clear of Heimdall. 


It's hard to imagine just how amazing this landing was.  Think, for a moment, about the fact that the heat shield and parachute helped slow the lander from roughly 12,500 mph to 5.4 mph by transferring all that velocity into heat energy during that proverbial terrifying seven minutes.  

They used a  "disk-gap-band" parachute (two fabric components separated by a gap) similar to the ones used on NASA's Viking landers in 1976.  It's just under 40 feet wide which is actually smaller than the one used for the Mars Pathfinder landing, but new design elements mean more drag.  When deployed the lander was descending at 1.7 times the speed of sound so the chute is super tough.  Check out this photo from a test run done in Idaho.


I love fantastic feats of engineering and the photographs that document them!  Here is one last image of the lander (parachute deployed) for your viewing pleasure.

Tags: descent, HiRise, JPL, Mars lander, NASA, parachute, Phoenix, photos