Robots not FIRST

I've been faithful to only blogging about FIRST related robotics, however since FIRST is in a slow period right now, I'll blog about something a little different.

This past weekend NASA landed Phoenix on Mars. If you are not aware, Phoenix is on a mission to discover water ice on Mars and maybe any evidence of life or that life may have existed there at one time.

Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole on Sunday May 25 and I watched NASA TV for all the coverage. There weren't any immediate video signals, the only way they knew what Phoenix was doing was based on radio signals received at JPL. It was awesome when they had confirmed Phoenix had safely landed. During EDL, (Entry, Descent and Landing) NASA TV played lots of animations of what the spacecraft was going through and what it needed to do to land. This was great, but it still left me wondering what it was really like. I wanted real pictures. It took an hour or so and a few black and white pictures began to come back from Phoenix. The pictures showed that the spacecraft had opened it's solar panels properly and showed the horizon. They were beautiful; simply stunning!

Today, even more spectacular images came back, but not from Phoenix. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which is orbiting the red planet snapping pictures of everything it sees, saw the landing site for Phoenix. Check out this picture. It clearly shows the landing site / Phoenix, the parachute and backshell and the discarded heat shield. If you think about the image a little, it looks like Phoenix approached from the lower left side of the image (maybe about 4:00 or 5:00). It dropped it's heat shield and let go from the parachute. A wind directly from the top of the picture blew the chute down and even dragged the backshell through the Martian soil. At the top of the image is Phoenix with a small blast area surrounding it from it's retro rockets that gave it a soft landing.

Lastly, an image came back from Phoenix that is very cool. Check out this picture. This is the Phoenix lander, you can see one of it's solar panels, an American flag, and what looks like an audio CD. It's actually a DVD, and inscribed on this DVD are the names of people that visited the Phoenix website before it launched. You could sign up and have your name burned onto this DVD, which is exactly what I did for myself and my kids. Our names are on this DVD and will be on Mars for a long time. If you look carefully, the title is "Messages from Earth - 2007".

If nothing FIRST related happens soon, I may write more about cool robot stuff happening elsewhere.