Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Seven Minutes of Terror and Triumph: Phoenix Lands on Mars

Episode Date: May 26, 2008

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7 minutes of terror and triumph as Phoenix lands on Mars, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to a special edition of Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. And now, to the Arctic Circle of Mars. I'm Matt Kaplan. Let's get right to it. Here, exactly as it happened on the evening of Sunday, May 25th, are the last few minutes of the Phoenix lander's perilous descent to the surface of the red planet. You'll hear the broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Lab,

along with commentary from the Planetary Society's Planet Fest, where 750 fans were holding their breath as they watched the big screen. We pick up the action as Phoenix dangles from its parachute, still more than a mile up in the Martian sky. By the way, if this doesn't get to you, you're listening to the wrong radio show. It should be any minute. Well, it stays on the parachute for quite some time.

It's several minutes on that parachute, so... At this point in time, if you have normally reached altitude convergence, you stand by for confirmation by telemetry. Radar reliable. So the radar is working. Altitude 2,000 meters. Altitude convergence detected.

Altitude 1,800 meters. 1,700 meters. 1,600 meters. Okay, the radar is working. It's finding the surface. Spacecraft knows its elevation. Standing by for land separation. Altitude 1,100 meters.

Sigma may drop out during land separation. Altitude 1000 meters. Land separation detected. We have required the signal. Gravity turn detected. Alright, it's a free fall. Altitude 600 meters. 500 meters. 400 meters. Hang on. 250 meters. 150 meters. 100 meters. 150 meters. 100 meters. Come on, come on. 80 meters.

50 meters. Constant loss of space detected. Altitude 40 meters. 30 meters. 27 meters. 20 meters. 50 meters. Standing by for touchdown.

Slow down. That's good. Yes it did. Touchdown signal detected. Thank you. Excellent. Outstanding. Outstanding. Congratulations. It's a lander. Everybody breathe. Peter Smith has been waiting for this forever. Fifteen years. Fifteen years. 15 years. Now we have to see if the camera deploys.

There's a couple of deployments that have to take place. So I'm not sure they'll detect that before the Odyssey sets. So I think they get the successful touchdown in the limited amount of information. We have normal termination of EDL comm by Odyssey and direct to Earth. Phoenix. Phoenix has landed. We got it. The flawless arrival of the Phoenix lander at Mars recorded just hours ago as we prepare this week's show. You heard commentary from Donna Shirley, former head of the Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Lab,

Jim Bell of Cornell University, who is lead scientist for the PanCam color imagers on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and our own Bruce Betts, who hosted the Planetary Society's PlanetFest celebration. We will also devote next week's program to Phoenix, and that's when we'll have had time to sift through the hours of great audio

collected just prior to and immediately after the landing. By then we should also be able to report on the exciting science that Phoenix will have begun returning to Earth. In the meantime, stay with us for my pre-landing conversation with Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, the man who waited 15 years for this incredible accomplishment. Later, we'll hear what Peter had to say just after the landing when he placed a call to PlanetFest. We'll wrap up with this week's edition of What's Up, recorded with Bruce, as that amazing evening was coming to a close. Emily Lakdawalla and Bill Nye will return next week.

Just one quick news item to mention. NASA has given the go for launch to Space Shuttle Discovery. The six-person crew hopes to lift off for the International Space Station on Saturday, May 31. It's the second of three flights needed to complete Japan's large Kaibo laboratory. It was just four days before the successful landing of Phoenix that I placed an early morning call to Peter Smith's home. It wasn't the Phoenix principal investigator who answered.

He just has to get his key so he can go in his office to talk with you. That's fine. Yeah, just give him a second and he'll be right with you. As long as he knows where his spacecraft is. He does, and it's right where it should be. And I take it this is Mrs. Smith. Yes, it is. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

I hope you're holding up well during this amazing week. Yeah, no, it's been very, very exciting. It really has been. It certainly is. And all things seem to be going just absolutely perfectly. It's just amazing. I mean, everything that they've tested, it just, and it's heading right for the center of its target right now. They were absolutely amazed.

They couldn't believe it. It's just headed perfectly there. Tell Peter we don't need to talk to him. I'll just talk to you. Oh, I don't know if he'd, I don't know if that would go over too well. Hold on just a second. Sure. Thanks very much. Peter found his keys, of course.

Here's our conversation. Peter, we are so appreciative that you are able to take the time during this week of, I don't know, is it incredibly anxious? I would certainly be going out of my mind. Well, Matt, it takes a strong will to get through this week. I'll tell you that for sure. We have every expectation of success. We think we've done all the prep work we need to do. However, it's so dangerous landing on Mars that, of course, there's a lot of trepidation among us.

It's going, though, as well as you could possibly hope from what I've read. I mean, what is the current status, very briefly? The current status, we've drawn a bullseye in the northern plains on Mars in a place we call the Green Valley. And as of yesterday morning, and this can change, we're headed right at the bullseye, right at the very center. And that ellipse, that landing ellipse, can easily be seen on your website, the University of Arizona site, or our own planetary.org. the University of Arizona site, or our own planetary.org. Emily Lochte-Walla, my colleague, has been giving lots of coverage to this mission in her blog.

She just showed us that that ellipse was repositioned a little bit, what, yesterday or a couple of days before? Saturday, yes. On Saturday. And so you're on target for reaching inside the Arctic Circle of Mars for the first time. And we have one more opportunity, which would be next Saturday night, that's the 24th, to adjust that if we drift away from that bullseye, because little attitude changes in the spacecraft can add up, and the next thing you know, you're not centered anymore. It's just like any long mission. We can drift away from the bullseye.

This mission has generated so much excitement in recent days. I think that that came as a surprise to some people, but we're hearing about record levels of website visits, lots of media coverage, yours truly included, of course, and our own sold-out event. I mean, sold out for several days now, the PlanetFest event in Pasadena, which will be all about this mission. Are you at all surprised by the attention that you're generating? I am not surprised.

I think when you're part of a search for life on another planet, everybody's going to get excited. It's so thrilling to be able to lead such a mission of such magnitude. And, you know, we are not likely to find life on this mission, but we're going to find the evidence that life could exist on Mars, and that will, I think, spur the Mars program to send more missions and try and take the next step, which is actually discovering what kind of Martian life there is. We heard you talk on last week's show, in fact, when we ran excerpts of last week's

media briefing, that this is very much not a life detection mission, but that you are looking for these essential elements, well, primarily water, and that you have a real chance of landing on top of it. We are sending some of the most powerful scientific instruments ever sent to Mars in exactly the search to see if the soil above the ice in the northern plains has been modified by liquid water. There's several telltale signs that will prove to us that liquid water has modified those soils. One thing is rather obvious. You look for salt. And if there's been liquid water, it leaches salt out of the soil. And then when the water evaporates,

it's left behind as a salt layer. So a salt layer would be very telling. And also, volcanic soils can be modified into clays by the action of water, and finding a clay layer associated with the ice would be kind of clues we're looking for. You said this is more of a vertical mission than a horizontal one. Yes, we have no wheels. But you do have a long arm. We have a long arm, and the idea is the northern plains of Mars are so self-similar. One place looks just like another.

Why would we spend some of our valuable time moving from one polygonal structure to the next? They all look the same from orbit. Really, what we care about is going down. I think back, as I'm sure almost everyone does, to the legacy of the Viking mission, the last soft lander, successful soft lander on Mars, it had an arm. It even had little ovens or little reaction chambers like you have on this spacecraft. That's correct. And what they found was there were no organic materials at the very sensitive level they were able to detect them. And so that has set back the search for life on Mars by 20 years,

is that discovery that there was no organics associated with Mars. However, maybe Viking landed in the wrong place. Maybe the organics are preserved in the ice layers in the Arctic region. We've certainly learned that this is a very big and a very diverse planet. Oh, yes. It's got the same land area as the solid land area on Earth, so it's huge. I mean, it takes a long time to explore such a large place. And for the Phoenix mission, we are just taking one sample out of a terrain

that's possibly 25% of the Martian surface. So if we see something exciting just with a random scoop full of soil and ice, then that says a lot for life on Mars. So we're very thrilled to be able to start this exploration. We'll continue our conversation with Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith in one minute. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space,

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Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan with our special coverage of the Phoenix Mars Lander mission. My guest is Principal Investigator Peter Smith. In a few minutes, we'll hear Peter greeting the crowd at the PlanetFest celebration just after the May 25 touchdown. First, here's more of our pre-landing conversation a few days ago.

Peter, I want to look back. I think that you and I first talked quite a few years ago now when your mission, Phoenix, was just one of several interesting proposals to become a scout mission to the Red Planet. At that point, you know, you and others had your fingers crossed. You still do years later. But really, this long and winding road started a long time before that for you. Yes, that's certainly true.

The Phoenix mission is really returning back to operation. Some of the developments have been going on for as long as 15 years. And I've been involved in the camera portion of that for a long time. And I've been involved in the camera portion of that for a long time. And now we put all of our instruments together into one package and used the spacecraft that was developed for a 2001 opportunity but never got to fly. And since we were kind of bringing back to life these old pieces of hardware, we thought of it as a phoenix sort of thing. It's a phoenix image of resurrecting from ashes and coming back

to life. So we really think that when we get to Mars, we'll have done the best things we could do with this investment of the last 15 years. I also think it's kind of striking that the high-rise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which you had a lot to do with, we've talked about extensively on this show, you managed its development, as from what I've read. That camera has played a key role in selecting the spot for Phoenix to set down. Yes, the resolution of the high-rise camera is about 30 centimeters per pixel. That allows us to see the rocks on the surface for the first time ever from space, and this has allowed us to really map our landing site, the bullseye that we were talking about, to determine what the rock abundances are. And we know that we are in a very safe place as far as rocks go,

which is our biggest danger Mars presents to us as we land on the surface. I would never, of course, ask a principal investigator which instrument on his spacecraft is his favorite. But do talk a little bit about those. I mean, you're not just going to be digging up and analyzing soil. That's correct. The Phoenix mission is a little like a human on Mars. It doesn't look human-ish, but it acts that way. It's a very curious set of instruments that have eyes and an arm that can reach out and touch and pick up samples. And the instruments on the

deck, we deliver these samples to, are somewhat akin to a nose and a tongue, if you like. And the nose part is really a set of ovens. So as we pick up samples, we can heat them and release the vapors out of them, just like the oven in your kitchen can release vapors as you cook food. But we cook it up to 1,800 degrees, so we're able to actually drive the vapors out of various minerals and tell what those minerals are. And then we also have another instrument where we simulate the time when ice has melted. And we add water to the soil, water we brought with us, and we stir it together

and we look at the salts that go into solution. So we have the equivalent of a nose and a tongue on the deck. And finally, the spacecraft is quite interested in the weather, and we can measure temperature and pressure and cloud heights and properties and all kinds of things associated with polar weather, which should be quite fascinating. It's certainly more exciting than the equatorial weather. Do you have a microscope as well? We also have a microscope, yes, that's right. And we'll look at the tiny little grains of sand. It has six times the resolving power of the two MER rovers.

Where will you be on Sunday? I'll be in the control room making sure that we land safely. And at JPL? At JPL. Then JPL's role in this, I guess, becomes a little bit less important and shifts to your hometown, to the University of Arizona and your lab. Well, the University of Arizona has a long history of scientific analysis of data from various planets in our solar system. So I felt when I was writing the proposal that this is the right place to be doing the science. We have a tremendous resource at the university with lots of scientists

of all disciplines who are readily available if we need them. And so we will be collecting our data from a facility that the university donated to our project. Hopefully we can last for six months, maybe eight months before winter arrives in the northern plains. six months, maybe eight months before winter arrives in the northern plains. If the world is excited about this, I would say that your town and your campus are maybe an order of magnitude beyond that. I saw that even the marching band had a little tribute to Phoenix. Did you see that? Yes, they dressed as aliens.

I think it was the tuba players had masks on, and the symbols were lit up on fire, and, oh, it's the most gorgeous thing you ever saw. And they made a pattern of Mars, and a group of the marching band came in like a rocket and landed on Mars in the middle of the field at halftime. It was wonderful. Peter, we hope to have almost as great a celebration on Sunday at Planet Fest as people around the world are holding their breath along with you. Well, Matt, I hope to stop by and see you guys somewhere between 2 and 3 o'clock.

I'm trying to work that out into my schedule. Oh, we would love that, of course. And, you know, all I'd heard is that you might have time to make a phone call, but, boy, would we love to have you there in person. Thank you so much for that. I'd love to come and see everybody. It's so exciting, and I'm so happy that 800 people have signed up to enjoy the landing, which I am very confident is going to be safe, although I'm told there's always risk to land on Mars.

But I'm very confident that we're going to have a wonderful mission. land on Mars, but I'm very confident that we're going to have a wonderful mission. And can I put in my request to take an early photo of our little DVD that's gone along for the ride? Absolutely. Absolutely. We're very proud of that DVD and all the signatures of the Planetary Society members and other people who wanted to send their name or their children's name to Mars. We have a good list. Peter, we're out of time. We will all be watching and pulling for you and hoping for a very successful set-down within the Arctic Circle on Mars just a few days from now as we speak. Thank you, Matt. I'm excited.

Peter Smith is the principal investigator for the Phoenix mission, now beginning operations above the Arctic Circle on Mars, where Peter is convinced we will soon find ice just beneath a surface that is broken into endless diamond-shaped polygons. Hardly an hour after the nail-biter of a landing on Sunday, May 25, a triumphant Dr. Smith placed a call to the Planetary Society's PlanetFest celebration, where 750 fans were waiting to cheer him and his team. Here's PlanetFest Master of Ceremonies, Bruce Betts.

Congratulations. This is fantastic. Thank you, Planet Fest. Oh, my God, wasn't it a thrill? I have never seen anything like it. We have rehearsed and rehearsed all the things that could go wrong with this landing, and none of those happened. We even landed on the surface. We were flat to the surface within a quarter of a degree.

You couldn't have gotten it closer to zero? There's no such thing as zero. No, that's wonderful. And you had 750 people cheering, crying, and happy and ecstatic down here watching you up there. Any other updates you've got for us, what's happening up there? You've been a busy man. Well, we're preparing for our first downlink now that we're a surface station, and I expect to be able to tell you that the solar arrays are deployed,

and with a little luck I will be able to show you some pictures of Mars. So just stand by. All right, we'll stand by. We'll keep monitoring things down here and checking out what's going on. And we appreciate very much you taking some of your precious time to check in with us. Hey, thank you so much for your

support. You guys are all important to this mission. Thanks very much. Thank you, Bruce. I'll be talking to you later. Great. Feel free to check back if you have any more time. Okay. All right. Bye, Bruce. I'll be talking to you later. Great. Feel free to check back if you have any more time. Okay. All right. Bye-bye.

Bye, everybody. Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith talking with Bruce Betts and 750 joyous, very relieved fans at Sunday's Planet Fest celebration in Pasadena, California. And in just a moment, Bruce Betts will talk with us in this week's edition of What's Up. Hey, nice job hosting Planet Fest. Hey, thank you. Nice job making all my audiovisual dreams come true. It was interesting.

We had a lot of equipment back here, and it was an accomplishment, but nothing like the accomplishment we saw these guys putting that lander down in the Arctic Circle of Mars. That was spectacular, and what a wonderful event with 750 people cheering live when we got the touchdown, got the first images. It's exciting. Would it be anticlimactic now to ask you about the night sky? Well, probably, but on the other hand, Mars is in the night sky, so you can look up and squint and see if you can see Phoenix. It's up there in the night sky, so you can look up and squint and see if you can see Phoenix. It's up there in the west in the early evening looking orangish-reddish.

It's off from Castor and Pollux and kind of moving over towards Leo where Saturn is currently hanging out, still near Regulus and Leo. And Saturn looking kind of yellowish, and both of them looking like basically bright stars. Pre-dawn sky, actually any time after around midnight, you can check out the brightest star-like object in the sky is Jupiter, and it will be low in the east around midnight. It will be high overhead at dawn.

What else you got for us? Well, I think we should move on to, you know, that part of the program where we got the crowd, the diehards, the ones who stayed through the very end and checked out the NASA press conference at the end. They helped us out. And let's listen to them say, ready, random space fact, one, two, three. Random space fact. That was, that's such fun. I love it. Thank you. Thank you to all those who attended and those who enthusiastically, I loved it.

It was the first time I asked him and just such enthusiasm. And they would still be here if we hadn't told them, hey guys, the show's over. Hey, get out of here. Go home. We're turning off the screen. Hey, get out of here. Go home. We're turning off the screen. But for them and everyone, although all of them heard most of these, here are a few Phoenix random space facts. I think this first three-legged lander to land on Mars successfully,

the place where they were going to land was nicknamed Green Valley because in the color coding on the charts, green was a good safe place to land, and so this whole area was called Green Valley. And sure enough, flat as a board, no big rocks, just the way the engineers and managers love to see it. And also we have courtesy of Rob Manning tonight, the quirky random space fact, this is the first spacecraft to enter the Mars atmosphere with no attitude control. And then he went on for a while to explain exactly why this was apparently a good thing. In the end, they landed. So there you go. Phoenix Random Space Facts. Let's go on to our previous trivia contest.

We asked you about the LCROSS spacecraft, which will launch later this year. And it is going to observe and then fly through a plume from an impact that's going to occur into the lunar surface, make a big splat, throw material out, LCROSS flies through it, and then LCROSS four minutes later slams into the surface itself. But what is that thing that's going to watch slam into the surface? That was your trivia question. How do people do?

We got a lot of entries, and we got one from Chris Bono. Chris Bono, a first-time winner. He didn't give the full details, but it was close enough. A spent rocket stage. Well, it happens to be the Centaur upper stage of the booster that is getting LCROSS and, coincidentally, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter all the way to the moon. And in particular, they want to throw up material from a permanently shadowed crater. So it's not only a polar region, but it will be a permanently shadowed crater where there

might be water ice. Well, Chris, we're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt. How's that? I saw a bunch of them here tonight, by the way. I kept complimenting people on their nice t-shirts. Let's give away another one. Well, I've got to mention, I got some very nice compliments about the show. Some regular listeners here, they love me, they hate you. It was, you know, the usual.

I think you got it backwards. Oh, maybe. Anyway, they like the show. Next trivia contest, let's ask you about Phoenix. Tell us, right before it landed, just before it landed, what was its horizontal velocity? What was its vertical velocity? Approximately. Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. You've got until June 2nd, Monday, June 2nd at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer and win your own Planetary Radio t-shirt and proudly wear it to the next Planet Fest, whenever that happens. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky and think about soft, successful landings on Mars. Thank you and good night. That's exactly what I'm going to think about as I drift off to sleep

tonight. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us every week here for What's Up and sometimes at PlanetFest. More special Phoenix and PlanetFest coverage next week. Of course, we've got continuous Phoenix updates at planetary.org,

and especially in Emily Lakdawalla's blog. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week on Mars, everyone. Thank you.