Phoenix probe, Nasa’s spacecraft sent the first pictures from Mars. It landed in the northern polar region of Mars, and began its three months months of examining a site where is considered of having frozen water. The first images from the Mars Pheonix Probe showed the space probe in good condition after its 10-months journey in which it travelled 640 million kilometres.
“Over the next few days, we’ll be getting the whole scene filed in,” said the Phoenix mission’s chief scientist, Peter Smith. “We’ve only looked at one little sliver of the Martian surface, but it’s exactly what we wanted, and we couldn’t be more excited.”
The successful landing of Phoenix is a relief for NASA as only five of 11 previsious U.S attempts to land spacecrafts on Mars have succeeded. According to NASA, the spacecraft approached Mars at a speed of about 20,000 kilometres an hour and made a difficult descent, decribed as “seven minutes of terror”. When it entered the atmosphere, it used superheated friction with the atmosphere, a strong parachute and a set of retrorockets to make its three-legged standstill touchdown on the surface, NASA said.
The mission of the probe is to study the planet’s frozen water for evidence of carbon-containing chemicals and to digg into the ice-rich soil with the lander’s robotic arm. It will also monitor the planet’s arctic-region weather from the surface for the first time using the Canadian-built Meteorological Station, or Met, which can monitor changes in water abundance, dust, temperature and other variables.
More images at European Space Agency.
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