Within hours of touching down in the Martian Arctic, Nasa's Phoenix probe has transmitted its first snapshots of the dusty landscape. The images mark a perfect start to its three month mission to check the planet for signs it was once habitable.
Nasa officials could not have hoped for a better start to the Phoenix probe's mission on Mars. The lander touched down on flat ground just before 1am BST today and has since unfurled its solar arrays and begun surveying the immediate area.
Among the first pictures taken by the probe's stereoscopic camera was this shot of the northern plains of Mars, showing the pebble-strewn surface and polygonal cracks that are common in the region.
The official landing time for Phoenix was recorded as 00.53 BST on May 26, in a polar region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.
Once the dust settled, the spacecraft took a few pictures of itself, including its feet and solar arrays.
This image shows in more detail one of the polygon patterns that mark the ground at the landing site. Similar markings are found in the arctic regions of our own planet.
The Phoenix probe will be the first to touch water on another planet, marking a new era for Nasa's "follow the water" strategy for finding evidence of life beyond Earth.
Two hours after the landing, the first crystal clear images came back from Phoenix, showing its solar arrays had been deployed and the craft was sitting on a stable and safe surface.
"These images are telling us we have a healthy configuration for the spacecraft," said Dan McCleese, chief scientist for the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Lab in California. "This looks like a good place to start digging."
2 comments:
this is really a big step for the exploration in mars!
and make the dream of migrating to another planet is possible!
The landscape is quite similar to an landscape on Earth. However, on second thought, it seems really surreal to look at another planet as if we were there.
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