After 422m miles, a parking lot on Mars

Published on Monday 26 May 2008 22:17

WITH its monotonous landscape and mile after mile of dirt and dust, it may not seem the most fetching spot to take a set of snaps. But this is one of the first ever photographs taken from the surface of the Martian Arctic, courtesy of Nasa's Phoenix spacecraft.

Taken by a camera mounted aboard the unmanned vehicle, which touched down yesterday following an extraordinary 422 million-mile journey, the pictures have thrilled scientists with their unprecedented views of the Red Planet and its northern polar tundra.

Below the surface lies a thick layer of ice, in which lurk crucial clues as to whether life existed there – and may still exist. Over the next 90 days, Phoenix's robotic arm will dig hard into the frozen soil to claw out ice samples, pop them in its ovens, and analyse the vapours and residue for telltale indicators of life on Mars.

"I know it looks a little like a parking lot," admitted Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, the Phoenix mission's project leader. "But it's exactly what we wanted and I couldn't be more pleased. This is a scientist's dream right here on this landing site."

Phoenix, designed and operated by some of the world's finest scientific minds, came in for a textbook landing at 12:53am UK time yesterday following a risky, high-speed plunge through the Martian atmosphere in which it had stood only a 50-50 chance of survival.

In the mission control room at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, scientists and engineers who have spent the last decade working on the project chewed anxiously on their pens as they awaited a signal from the spacecraft that it had landed without mishap.

When the signal finally came, relayed across the solar system by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flying overhead, the control room erupted into scenes of jubilation. "Today, you have had a chance to watch a team in action making something that's incredibly hard look easy," Dr Mike Griffin, the head of Nasa, told reporters. "You know they are the most expert of the expert when they can do that."

Not only did Phoenix touch down safely, as only 45 per cent of previous Mars landers have done, but it settled in an almost perfectly flat spot within a highly precise target range.

Dr Ed Weiler, Nasa's associate administrator for science missions, likened the pinpoint accuracy of such a landing to a golfer teeing off in Washington and scoring a hole in one in Sydney, Australia. "That's not a bad shot," he added.

After opening its solar wings to harness energy from the sun and recharge its batteries, Phoenix swiftly hoisted its mast and swivelled its camera to photograph its new home.

Like many an amateur photographer, it even managed to take a picture of one of its own feet, reassuring ground handlers that it was firmly planted in the Martian dust.

From the pictures, the northern polar plains of Mars look like a patchwork quilt of polygonal shapes.

Mars' tundra has only ever been photographed from space before, and Phoenix is the first vehicle to land there.

"We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we saw the polygons … it looks great to me," said Mr Smith."Underneath this surface, I guarantee, is ice."

WHAT NEXT?

PHOENIX'S robotic arm has been tested in the rocky landscape of California's Death Valley and can dig through soil as tough as concrete. Its claw is similar to that used by ice sculptors. Both will swing into action later in the week once they have been sent commands from ground control.

The vehicle will also be sending back more photographs, including a panorama of its surroundings. One image in particular was intriguing technicians yesterday because it showed an unidentified white object on the near horizon. It could be Phoenix's parachute or heat shield, both of which were jettisoned as it came in to land in the Martian arctic.

However, Dr Charles Elachi, director of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, revealed that Dr Weiler had already put forward an alternative theory. "Ed thinks it's a polar bear," he said.

Time capsule DVD that leaves a cultural footprint of Earth for the future

ON BOARD Phoenix is a DVD, sent by The Planetary Society, an influential space advocacy group dedicated to exploration of the solar system and the search for life beyond Earth, containing messages to future human inhabitants of Mars.

The disc, intended as a digital time capsule, holds personal greetings recorded by space visionaries, such as the late science-fiction author Arthur C Clarke, who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ray Bradbury, the author of The Martian Chronicles, and Isaac Asimov, the author of the Foundation series.

It also holds a collection of Mars-themed literature and artwork, including a poster from the 1936 film Mars Attacks the World, depicting the intergalactic hero Flash Gordon preparing to battle a tyrannical Martian ruler called Ming the Merciless.

Audio recordings also stored on the disc include Orson Welles's chilling 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds – the tale of an invasion by Martians that was so realistic it caused public panic in the US – and narrations by the British actor Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"It could be centuries from now, on the planet Mars, when a man, or a woman, or perhaps a child, will come across this small disc," said Carl Sagan, the head of The Planetary Society.

"When this future Martian picks up this tame-looking disc, he or she will hold in their hands a message from our world, addressed to theirs.

"The disc will be part of a relic of an ancient unmanned spacecraft named Phoenix, which landed on the planet in 2008.

"Possibly preserved as a historic memento, perhaps long abandoned and forgotten, Phoenix will have kept its secret through the long Martian years."

Louis D Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, came up with the idea when his friend, Isaac Asimov, died. "I began thinking – how do we honour him?" Mr Friedman recalled. "And it's not just him. It's what he represented. So then I thought: why not honour three giants, Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke – A,B,C – and do it by sending their stories to Mars. Then I began discussing it with Carl and other people and it grew into this bigger idea, this notion of a science-fiction anthology."

• MORE INFO: www.nasa.gov